Gadgetory

see the so I decided to get a Christmas present for Dan and Lincoln I'm a little bit late but I think they'll forgive me when they see what we've made I talked these guys into letting me film a little bit about how neon signs are made and I think you'll enjoy the process let's get started so neon signs are all over the place lighting up cities lighting up exit signs letting up open signs it's hard to walk around without seeing a neon sign they've been around for about a hundred years started over in Paris at the Paris Auto Show in about 1910 neon is a rare gas present in the air all around us and is separated from the air around us by a liquification and then pulling it out of that liquid kind of like how the king of random was getting liquid nitrogen out of the air in his basement remember that video I made but before we get into the gas part of the signs let's talk about the glass tubing now the glass tubing comes in all different shapes sizes and colors the inside of the tube is coated with a powder the powder can be any color we got red we got blue yellow orange but the coloring of the tube doesn't necessarily signify what color the lamp is gonna be when the gas is actually inside it's an interesting process with a lot of chemistry and it's an art form so to make this sign for what's inside we started off with a singular piece of glass tube and glass when warmed up gets soft and malleable you can see it kind of drooping down here in the video and we take that piece of glass tube set it on a piece of paper and line it up in the finish shape we only have a couple seconds to do this because as the glass cools down it hardens and will be in that shape permanently now obviously this was the easiest Bend and probably the only one I could master since I'm not an expert at creating neon signs to make the tighter bins we have to go to something called a crossfire with a lot more you know flame in the middle and we fold the glass tubing in something called a double back which makes the tighter corners for the inner letters of the what's inside sign once the glass tubing is bent two electrodes are placed in either side which kind of completes a circuit electricity needs to bounce around inside of the tubing in order to ignite or light the gas that's inside of it we take it over to the manifold which successfully pulls all of the regular air out of the glass tubing and inserts argon one of the gases that exists in the air around us but in very small amounts one cool thing with the electrodes on either side of the glass tubing is that they needed to be heated up in order to get rid of any impurities or imperfections on the metal itself so the inside of the contraption can burn cleanly remember throughout this process were being very careful not to damage anything because glass is glass and glass can break after the glass is warmed up and the burnin is complete we can inject a very small amount of argon into the vacuum that we created inside of the tubing remember this small ball of mercury we're gonna come back to this later you can see that the natural burning color of the argon is kind of like a pinkish color almost it's a smooth red obviously this parenthesis from the Watson side sign is still connected to the vacuum system so we'll take the hand torch and put it all around the small glass tubing and because of the vacuum inside it naturally wants to pinch itself shut as it warms up successfully keeping the argon inside of the glass tubing and allowing us to remove it from the vacuum machine the manifold will let it burn for a minute to make sure the tubes good and there's no small leaks make sure everything's functional then we'll turn it off let it cool down for a second and we'll take the small ball of mercury in that little glass bubble and slowly tip it into the tube itself the reaction between the silver mercury and the kind of pinkish argon is what turns the tube lighting white and you can see the color change as the mercury drop drips into the entire tube we have the electrode on one din burning the bluish white and the electrode on the other end burning pink because the mercury hasn't gotten there yet once the mercury has touched both sides and everything is burning clean and white we can tip it off and remove that last little niblet of glass from the parentheses then we can cover both ends in a small piece of rubber and mount it to the back plate of where it's going to live permanently there's something called a transformer on the back of the back plate that allows electricity to flow through each of the connections inside each letter each letter has two electrodes completing a circuit inside of each of the glass formations one interesting fact is it has little glass pieces to separate it from the back plate right now the what's inside logo is mounted on plastic but if it was mounted on metal it would need like an insulator between the electrified glass and the metal plate so these plastic standoffs with the copper wiring keeping everything in place is what gives it that insulation the cool thing with all of these colors is that depending on the powder coating on the outside of the tube and the electricity flowing through it depends on what color we get and how bright it is you can see we have a 6,500 white right here and a 4500 color temperature white over here basically anything is possible and finally when everything is complete we have a finished what's inside logo right here and I think it turned out pretty sweet and I hope Dan and Lincoln aren't too mad at me for missing Christmas and giving it to am a little bit late I've learned that creating neon signs is not just chemistry but it's like an art form there are so many variables that go into the shaping of the glass as well as the gas and the mercury and the different elements that go into coloring the electricity even I've learned a lot today if you have any questions leave them down in the comments and I'll try to answer them I'm pretty excited the way it turned out thanks for coming along with us huge thanks to the rainbow neon sign company here in Salt Lake City for helping me out with this sign they've been around since 1945 making neon signs for quite a while they know a lot more than I do about this stuff I'll put a link for their website down in the video description if you have any questions for them I hope what's inside likes their neon sign thanks ton for watching and we'll see you around