Hi I was reading in a different forum that someone had a vintage power supply which had 2 neons 1 from each side of the centre tapped secondary which normally just glowed but at switch off they would flash bright blue because of the inductive kick from the transformer and from the smoothing choke the idea being to protect the rectifiers by clamping the spike. Also the PSU was designed to run motor generator sets feeding them 28 volts DC obviously motors are also a bit inductive so guess these nons helped with that too.. My question is do you think there's any mileage in using neons across the mains to act as surge arrestors? I'm thinking they could be a cheap option instead of MOVs etc what do you think? Am I miles out here or on to something?
So not really up to the job of surge protection then. I guess if they were some manufacturer would of taken advantage by now. In the PSU I mentioned the neons only flash at the moment of switch off which must be what saves them from destruction it does prove though that spikes on AC lines are a real thing.
So not really up to the job of surge protection then. I guess if they were some manufacturer would of taken advantage by now. In the PSU I mentioned the neons only flash at the moment of switch off which must be what saves them from destruction it does prove though that spikes on AC lines are a real thing.
