I am just waiting for the trial lot of about 20 VFDs from Noritake to arrive and you guys have come up with this "shock" aspect.

I thought I never will have to contend with this perennial display contrast issue and now seem to have landed with this filament problem. Let me see - I now have to improve the VFD mount to take minor shocks.

I can fully appreciate what Hal is saying. During my college days I had a Japanese calculator with a green display ( needed 4 AA size cells - maybe Global warming was just starting then... )and it fell down once. Thats it - after that all that could be seen were two lengthy filaments in the front..

Raghu