• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.22-29
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• 2002

The conventional neon transformer systems are very bulky and heavy because it consist of leakage type transformers made of silicon steel plates. In addition, it has problems in noise by a neon transformer and in possibilities of fire and electrical shock when neon tubes are destroyed. A protection circuit is designed for all types of neon transformer loaded with one or more neon tubes. Whenever the neon tube fails to be started up, comes to the life end, encounters faults with open-circuits at the output terminals of the neon transformer, the protection circuit will be initiated to avoid more critical hazards. The input of the transformer is automatically cut off when the abnormal condition occurs, preventing waste of no-load power. To improve such problems, in this paper, a new type of neon power supply systems for neon tube is designed and implemented using inverter type circuits and a newly designed lightweight transformer. In the developed neon transformer system, a 60［Hz］power input is converted to 20［KHz］high frequency using half-wave inverters, thereby the transformer reduces its size by 1/5 in volume and 1/10 in weight.