> On Aug 28, 2023, at 1:56 PM, gregebert <[email protected]> wrote: > > I did a lot of research about 15 years ago when I was thinking about doing > neon art. There are 3 really good books (The Neon Engineer's Notebook, Neon > Techniques, and The Neon Superguide) and I recommend you read all 3 > cover-to-cover. Though not particularly for nixies, there is a lot of good > info about the overall process. I have yet to read the Weston text (Cold > Cathode Glow Discharge Tubes).
I went to neon school back in 2001. I have all of the books that were in print them plus two thick binders of photocopied articles from all over the place. Naturally, I can't get to any of it right now. > I decided against doing neon art because the bombarding process is very > dangerous; far more dangerous than experimenting with microwave oven > transformers. It has to all be set up the "right way". Anything less is asking for disaster. If you don't feel safe don't do it. > The manifolds I saw were made of glass, even the valves, and require a > special lubricant/sealant. Yeah, borosilicate. A vast improvement over metal manifolds. The thing is that for ages neon was entirely an art form. Processing was done by the seat of the pants. At the turn of the millennium more scientific, documented methods were coming online and replacing the guesswork with actual physics. This involved the use of more apparatus. > I think you can use induction heating, rather than bombarding, for removing > impurities. We certainly didn't have anything like that then. Probably way more convenient, too. > The other thing that discouraged me was the need to use mercury; it's rather > toxic and I was concerned about inhaling vapors. I'm not afraid of mercury in > liquid form. The amount of mercury is pretty small. In the case of a broken tube, air the room out. It's no worse than breaking a large fluorescent tube. Terry Bowman, KA4HJH "The Mac Doctor" https://www.astarcloseup.com "Would you like to see the relevant data?"—343 Guilty Spark, Halo 2 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/E458FA0D-5D89-493F-875D-DFD37D285F8A%40gmail.com.
