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Re: GOT A NEON-WHAT NOW?
Re: "Neon" (sign transformer) failures
I suspect a large number of such failures are due to
"opening up the gap" too much in an attempt to get more output.
If the TC primary circuit capacitance even approaches resonance
with the leakage inductance of the neon transformer you can get
resonant voltage rise to several times the normal voltage, with
result plain old 60 cycle voltage breakdown. Think I can
trace all (of my many) failures here to that cause. Howevler,
However, many of the group report other sources of failures
which may be just as valid. I certainly wonder how the RF
voltage distributes itself across the windings. If most of
it occurs across a few layers (due to distributed capacitance
of the transformer windings) then you could get progressive
failures from that source too.
The symptoms of all of the failures here have been
a sudden cessation of output, rather than intermittent breakdown.
For what it's worth,
Ed Phillips