Honestly I like both, they have their applications. Of course, nothing will come close to the beauty of true neon, but LEDs are extremely efficient, both power wise and cost wise, and also don't require a noisy (EMI wise)/dangerous power supply.
As a guy who bends and installs neon, hard to agree. LEDs literally solves all the things I hate about neon, and meet or exceed all of the things I love about neon. I hate the glass shards. I hate working with mercury. I hate burning my fingers. I hate inadvertently stepping on a hose and extinguishing a glass torch. I hate transporting them like they were the last piece of glass in the world. I hate repairing units that I broke pushing the trode into a PK. I hate getting shocked by high voltage. I hate lugging around 30 pound ballasts into ceiling plenums while playing The Floor is Lava off of a ladder. I don't love how neon is dim and miscolored for 5 to 10 minutes until the mercury heats up in the winter. Oh hell, I must be old and crochety now, I could go on like this for days.
That's a good demonstration of how often I test super low value capacitors. I should have been more careful with lead placement and allowed for inter-lead capacitance.
Cold Cathode units were massively, *massively* popular in the world of pretentious computer cases during the middle 00's. It wasn't enough to have a see-through box, you had to have it lit with cold cathode tubes... And then six weeks later when your PC was out of date you had to buy and all-new one. What fun times they were.
I still use my bad-tastely modded case and none of my tubes died. 2 decades old tubes and drivers. Not forgetting that my pc is turned on form waking up to after midnight. Talk about sustainability. The hardware inside was upgraded many times, sometime requiring an angle grinder for installation.
I came up in this era. I was one of the early adopters of water cooling, had a Danger Den spiral aluminum block on my overclocked 1Ghz AMD Thunderbird processor when I went off to college in the fall of 2001. Waterlines went to an external radiator and fan set up which made it a bitch to move because I had to disconnect and drain everything. But I had large fans installed on that radiator running at half speed so damn if the thing wasn’t damn near close to silent which is pretty cool considering my roommates shitty Dell with 1/3 the power whirred and hummed constantly.
Lol, I just posted a comment a few minutes ago referring to that craze of using C.C.L. in PC's. I still have a bunch of the power supplies left over from that era. The tubes are all long dead or broken, but the supplies are still good
I never grokked that. I usually put my PC on the floor under the desk or in the hutch and couldn't really see it anyway. And now that they are small, they tend to go behind the monitors, where I again can't see them. I need the desk space and the PC was just another thing taking up that precious space.
There are still benders out here! I will make you any neon tube you want. I convert old lanterns into neon lanterns and am always looking for a small transformer, this may do the trick. Usually I am pushing about 18" of 10mm glass with argon (less resistance than neon so you can push more glass).
Usually used a mixture of neon and argon as it strikes a lot easier and is more forgiving at different pressures. Was pretty popular for outdoor tubes.
@@DragunSigns the composition of the "blue" gas mixture depends on the climatic zone in which the neon tube is to be used. In Poland, it is a Penning mixture with a composition of 75% Neon and 25% Argon, purity 4.5 (99.995%). For such a mixture, we use a working pressure of 8 Torr in the 15mm tube.
I love neon. If you have anything neon or have seen it in an old movie you know it is a type of light that creates a mood like no other. Me, I'm a coward around high voltage. Always glad to see our host taking apart the small stuff, the overlooked stuff. Electronic circuits are like jewelry to men, at least to me.
Your channel gave me the courage to unsoder a expensive switch in a salt truck and put a cheep eBay switch back in. It worked and saved $2999.00 plus labor. The new switch was like ¢69. First time trying anything electric thanks 😁👍
@davelowets What makes you say that.? Do know when LEDs were available to the general public.? Do you know what year the Ford Mustang Mach III was produced.?
That was one of the things I looked for when I was interviewing people for work as assemblers. It is so easy to know who's a pro just by watching them strip a wire and soldering a connection. That or simply handing them a soldering iron and hand tools and asking them to set up their soldering station. It was a beautiful thing to watch a pro set up their soldering iron base in just the right position at just the right angle so they could put the iron back in the holder without ever glancing over at it. I watched 1 interviewee do that first thing and told them they were hired. They asked me if I wanted them to solder anything and I said, "No need." I also watch to see if they break off a short piece of solder with their hands or cut it off with their side-cutters. ( Breaking it off with their hand stretches the solder and squeezes the flux out of part of it, meaning that there's no flux in some of the solder.) Tricks of the trade.
@@johnwest7993Must have been a rubbish company you hired for / work for. A real professional doesn’t use wire cutters to remove isolation. That is amateur and hobby level stuff. Secondly, watching how people are setting up their work station? What works for you may not work for others, as simple as that. I do agree however pulling solder apart isn’t the greatest. I give you 2 stars out of 5.
Demonetization isn't some puritanical censorship but because advertisers can get weary on what their ads are played against as it infers a kind of endorsement. Tobacco related content is demonetized because most advertises don't want to be associated with it not because RUclips has decreed it immoral and punishing creators with demonetization. This all started when ads were being played alongside ISIS recruitment videos and many major brands pulled their ads until RUclips sorted it out.
Thanks for the teardown! Ordered multipe a few weeks ago. Lovely little unit. I use one to drive the neon tube in a Sox lamp at very low power so the sodium doesn't vaporise and the lamp stays in that lovely pink startup sequence.
I've been helping folks restore pads for DDR arcade machines for a few years now, and a common task is the removal of neon tubes. They originally came with 16 4" tubes in the pads, half pink half light blue. Most prefer LEDs these days, but I've always kept the old neons just since you can't get them anymore. Thanks for sharing some knowledge - I'll make sure to learn more before trying to turn them into art or something like that, but you've given me some great information as a jumping off point! Edit: didn't expect the dancing stage mention!! Huzzah, I feel recognized! A lot of the early 2000s rhythm games had them, too... Pop'n music, beatmania, guitar freaks, drummania... Usually they'd mainly be halo style lights within the subwoofer assemblies, with the occasional straight one hidden in for accents.
As a school-age lad, I spent more than a few hours in the shop of a classmate's father. He was the local neon sign producer. He spoke of learning his craft in a school in Europe where vast amounts of glass tubing were spoiled in the learning process. He taught me to make "tubulations"--T-shaped junctions. Another bit of misspent youth...
There is an artist in our city, who specializes in murals and posters, called Cukin. You can easily find his work all around as he is pretty famous at this point. He also loves classic neon signs, and he even donated money to bring back one of the most recognized neons, "Adria" in Koszalin, Poland.
Oh man... I've got a PILE of those little power supplies laying around from when the craze in the early 2000's was around of putting the little colored cold cathode tubes in acrylic computer towers. All the tubes I had went dim a long time ago, and I still have a bunch of the power supplies around. Now I know what to do with them. I'm glad I hung onto them for 2 decades. 👍 Good tip!
Hi Clive. As usual, very informative. I have an ACME "Luminous Tube" neon sign transformer that's at least 50 years old. Made in Cuba, New Youk, USA. It weighs about 23 lbs, and it's rated at 12,000 volts, 30 ma. It makes a mean Jacob's Ladder. One must treat this monster with great respect!
A few days ago, I bid farewell to my neon glassblowing master. He passed away from cancer despite being quite young. He left behind his entire neon signs workshop, vacuum pumps, burners, phosphors, noble gases, and glass supplies. We had agreed before his illness to train me in using this equipment, but we only met twice. I learned to make bends, embed electrodes, welding tubes, but there wasn't enough time to learn how to operate the vacuum system. For now, I'm keeping all the equipment intact, but I don't know how long I'll be able to afford renting the space. Orders for neon glass ceased about three years ago, and since then, the neon market has essentially died out. So, even now, I don't see much sense in training, especially since the raw materials for neon production are now prohibitively expensive.
If you would like to get creative, you can use the glass and the equipment to make your own vacuum tubes. Triodes are fairly simple, and so are X-Ray tubes. 😜 I WISH I had access and the knowledge to glass blowing equipment.
love your work big clive, im a similar age, and work in HV, initially domestic electrician, I get the odd nod to the great Kenny Everat from your videos, good stuff thanks mate
A good tip when handling neon, that tip off where the tubulation has been made for pumping, that is the weakest most fragile point. Even picking at it with your finger nails can break that. I like using tubulated electrodes now where the tip off pokes out the back of the electrode, that way the rubber cap protects it once its installed
I like the colors CC tubes make. LEDs can make the same sort of pure saturated colors, but the RGB combos that are becoming ubiquitous are not as vivid for unusual colors.
Lot of retro stuff popping up these days. Watched a channel with a guy making nixie tubes from scratch. I love those things. Very 'retro futuristic' vibe about them.
I agree.... 👍 Very cool I use vacuum tubes whenever I have the chance when I'm building audio circuits. I love them. VERY power hungry, but the aura surrounding sitting in a dark room with a box full of vacuum tubes glowing, and receiving radio signals is so soothing.
I just bought one... Actually two of these the other day! Surprisingly enough...to drive two old CCTs I had lying around! Rather the coincidence, as I was hoping you would do a video on something similar. So thank you in advance
I still have the four in the bottom side of my engine table I built. Pretty handy little units. I triggered them with a sequencer board I bought off ebay to simulate the cylinders firing.
33pF capacitor seems decent, the reading of 37pF is probably just because there are stray capacitance all the way between the instrument and the measured component including holding the probes.
@6:30 you could have measured the capacitance on the wires, and they would effectively be in series, so it would halve the value, so doubling the measured value would give the cap value without dismantling it.
At the local Museum of Neon Art (MONA) they have classes on how to make neon signs. And the museum is pretty cool, too, though way too small for their collection.
I have 3 old neon transformers and 1 electronic one. I got given them years ago for free from a sign shop that had no use for them anymore. One is in a big metal box (Tunwell i think) the other 2 are solid potted blocks with a plastic cover (FART brand). I've had more fun than should be allowed with these things, (tesla coils mainly). All still going strong.
I used to make neon tubes back in the late 90s and early 2000s. Was quite a fun experience. Actual neon tubes generally glow bluish pink when you first make them. When they run for a while on the bombarder the bright orange develops.
This might be the most times anyone has said U-tube in a RUclips video. LED halo running lights have actually become standard equipment on a lot of cars in the US. Funnily enough, the neon halos were never really a thing over here, though underglow lights were.
You could make "angel eyes" kits with a bent acrylic tube, bright LEDs shooting into either end, and scuffing the forward-looking surface to let light selectively "leak" out. First kits were with halogen bulbs, but LEDs on MCPCBs let you customise the color, too, vs just halogen-white (~3000K).
It's like the history of vacuum tubes and transistors repeats itself. Glas tubes can be more decorative, retro, unique, artistic etc but solid state LEDs and transistors are just better in every other way, and with only marginal use and production the glas tubes are becoming more and more exclusive.
Too Cool Big Clive! I used to have a couple of Neon beer signs that sadly got broken. Too bad, they were kind of cool and now I miss them even more. LOL There is a place here in Boise Idaho called Rocket Neon. I'm sure they'd love a mention.
I managed to commission a full-custom (actual) neon sign off of Aliexpress. 24"x24" for ~£180 delivered about 3 years ago, maybe going on 4 now? Worth taking a look. I'm sure you could ask them to just send you some lengths of tubing, although whether you'll get any benefit in pricing I don't know as those sign listings are priced by size, not by length of tube. Was a wonderful design by the way, a fire/icy rain yin-yang affair: White, blue, turquoise, red, orange, and yellow gas-filled tubing in pretty intricate patterns. Came with driver and EU power cord with UK adapter, and all mounted on a metal frame with both legs to stand it up on a shelf, and a chain to hang it from a wall fixture.
Not sure how I missed this one I thought angel eyes were a new thing with led, I'd never known them to be ccfk before, I'll Definately have to look into that or getting the bulbs For neon tubes, is the neon tube voltage higher for a single terminal, or less if it has connections at both ends? Measuring capacitors in circuit, naughty
Angel eye lights on cars are LED with a fibre optic tube (since around 2010) The older ones 2001+ used a halogen bulb and fibre optics. I was unfortunate enough to have to replace a headlight last year on my M5 and the LED modules alone are about £150 each
About 18 months ago I went looking for an NST and holy cow finding one of the 15KV 60mA models without the GFCI was next to impossible. Took me a month of scouring fleabay to find one. Did make a decent Jacob's Ladder and someday I'd like to make a Tesla Coil out of it.
I found myself in possession of a 7.5KV / 30mA sometime during college in the late '90s and had a lot of fun making small jacob's ladders and vaporizing thin wires, among other things. It's got a 1978 date of manufacture stamped on the outside, same year I was born, so I've always been a bit sentimental for it even though i don't have a lot of daily use for it lol.
Back in the day, I was an auto neon fanatic! When they 1st came out l had to defend myself against local law enforcement; I received 5 tickets in a 2 week period. After the first one I went to the Highway Patrol office and talked to them. They told me that neon under carriage kits were not illegal (long as they weren't visible, blue, red or flashed). An officer even gave me a signed paper from the state of SC to show any other officers that I was within the law. 2nd traffic stop (btw, all 5 tickets came from the same officer) I showed him the paper and he read it and said, "I don't care what a state trooper told you,. They're illegal & you won't be running them in my city." Well, I went right back and told the trooper what the officer said & he was ferocious, "he better watch his mouth or I'll pull rank on him". Anyway, I was the talk of the court room and to my surprise the trooper showed up for my hearing and was floored by the amount of tickets I received.... Each ticket was going to cost me $300+ and 4 points. The trooper never had to say a word, the judge looked over everything and dismissed my charges. Then the ticketing officer said, but judge if you would step outside and look at his car...... Judge - "I DON'T HAVE TIME.... because of all these minor violations you have in front of me." Everyone in the court room applauded when the judge slammed the hammer down. I walked out with my head high! 😉
I really don't like LEDs as much as I used to because I feel people get very sloppy about using LEDs to light things well, and sometimes don't care when the colors are just horrible for the application. The loss of good esthetics actually looks far worse than I thought it could get in everyday places. Even the older displays that just used bare led dies as pixels were better than the crappy diffusers so often used. They are just token gestures all too often. It's about shaping the light and making it light up something evenly to the edges. I think of making neon and other types of displays that look as good as possible; as something I want to do just because I know how good they can look. And it seems this is becoming more important than just how I feel about it. I hope anyway.
I have a 2007 BMW, the angel eyes are a light pipe with a halogen bulb They look a little yellow. Looks better with a white LED, matches the colour temperature of the Xenon head lights I would be surprised if they used actual neons, even for older cars
Hello Clive, an old school neon bender (neon glass blower) here, +40 years. Have you seen these 3" plasma balls on TEMU for around US$5? They have a very small driver which surprised me on how small they are. I was expecting something like what you have in this video. Maybe this could be a Big Clive investigation?
Cheap chinese plasma globes often have a flyback power supply, they output spikes in one polarity and a lover voltage wave in the other polarity. The Royer/Baxandall oscillator is much better because it outputs a proper sine wave. But of course course nothing can replace the good old Tesla coil.
Question about the thinner size tube needing more voltage. Some Googling revealed that neon is about generating plasma in the tube. I suppose it's harder to maintain plasma through a thinner tube? (P.S. I just got my first lower voltage bench power supply and the first thing I checked was the ground through to mains. Thanks for all of the great safety tips, Clive.)
Those angle cutters strip way better if you flip them around so the flat side is pushing off the scrap insulation. Your angled side is squeezing it tighter against the wire.
I remember my teenage years working in a late bar. I had a good relationship with the manager and he would let me program the 0-10v touch pad lighting desk wired to NJD Dimmer packs under the desk. It did everything in there. The pin spots (Par36) the floods, the par36 head scanners, the fancy effects (just motorised lenses spinning around on 3 axis) and most interestingly, the NEON! There were 4 rows of 2 phosphor pink and 2 blood red tubes lining the dance floor, a green pub name sign behind the bar and all the pink neon that lit all the seating areas. I used to have hours of fun on days off going up there and doing a live lighting show by dimming, chasing and beating to the music. It was much more enjoyable than just watching some pre programmed sequence running through, missing beats or not doing enough of one effect. I made it dynamic to the individual song being played. LOVED IT! Even got to keep a cheeky length of tube after a refit, but alas never had the skill to light it LOL Miss those days..Id dread to think how much power ran through there.
Presumably you could measure the capacitor in the first configuration by metering across the two capacitor outputs and measuring their desires capacitance. Can't remember how capacitors combine in value when in series.
I think the driver might be a Baxandall (yes, the same genius of tone control fame) type judging by the series choke and nearby capacitor _viz_ 2:55. I don't think anyone would use a Royer in automotive applications (where the voltage can vary between 11v9 to 14v2) as Royers are much too voltage touchy, where Baxandalls are much more tolerant of poorly regulated supply. Also, since Royers run by saturation (therefore square wave) they can be very, very noisy.
the giant neon sign at my work is getting a worse fate than scrap; they're having a signage company cut the ends of the original tubes off, and pull LED tape through with a special diffuser. I figured out that they're DC powered, so the dead sections likely just need the polarity swapped to revive them, but, alas...
As a glass blowing sign guy who works with tons of both neon and LED I low key love this mash up of new and old. 😂 I predict those LEDs will start failing fast after the first summer in their new glass houses. I really wonder what kind of warranty the company has bought into? The company could always pay to have new electrodes welded on after they learn a painful lesson. Now I really want to try this for a laugh at work. I'm envisioning myself vacuuming a string through the tube to assist in fishing the LED tape.
I remember being really excited to get Angel Eyes for my Mini (not MINI) in the early 2000s. They were so expensive and there was a question over legality (at the time) so I never bothered. 😂
I wouldn't be bothered about the PSU for neon not to difficult to make and even the transformer is doable but the Tubes YES ! we must save them and make it a criminal offence to knowingly break one with penalties ranging from life upto death depending on the size and quantity of tubes damaged. Any opposition to this must be met with similar deterrents in mind and the artisans still making them protected at all costs, we cannot allow this art to be lost....cheers
I remember going to Piccadilly Circus in London way back in the 1970s and seeing then very large glass neon tube lighting up the side of the buildings and thinking that mush take some one hours or even days to make and bend then glass tubes. Now that art of glass bending must be dead and gone because now it's all LEDs powered signs. But still then where the days and things move on
While watching your video I remembered the time, when I was a kid, when I was doing experiments running a small linear 70W metal halide bulb (yep, one of those eye-blinding lamps that once lit shopping windows) with a similar 6 or 12V inverter. It was quite impressive to see that the inverter was able to strike and stabilize to some extent the discharge inside the bulb, which of course put out a very small fraction of the brightness that it would if powered on the right ballast, but still while at a very low power the thing actually worked. And it was able to shed a bit of light around in a very dark environment.
Grew up in a family sign business with our own neon shop. I designed hundreds of tubes using CorelDRAW and working with our tube bender. Very sad when LEDs took over. Our tube bender went back to school to get his electrical license as he saw the writing on the wall. I still have a large Santa sign I hang on the house during Christmas made of many different colored tubes and running at 30mA. I cringe every time I take it out of storage to hang it. I’ll break it one of these days and that will be the end. There is nobody left in my area bending glass. In the sign industry everything runs at either 30mA or 60. Most of what I worked with were large transformers. These smaller electrics came out the last decade of neons heyday. We always thought they were less reliable doing service work than the big iron as we called them.
I remember years back getting demonetised on a video of my cat sticking her nose down a mole hole, she wasn't doing anything viscious, just sniffing it, but the algorithm back then (or whatever it was) decided nope, no money for you, not that it made any money even after it was remonetised, just youtube being dumb, as they still are, nothing wrong with miniature smoke machines being dismantled after all... :P
I'd be keen to get my paws on a few cold cathode tubes with noble gasses - got a fairly good vacuum pump and built an annealing furnace to make my own noble gas filled glass things but buying noble gasses in sensible quantities turns out to be very, very, very difficult... 🙈
Very rare to get since people still able to make them are becoming endangered species themselves… Here in Belgium all of them are retired, and no place to learn it at school…
Haven't ever ran across any actual old neon in my day to day but I do kinda want to buy this driver though. . . Just in case. I would love to find an old neon sign
Thanks for the insight into these drivers, Clive. I don't know if it's possible or practical, but it would be interesting to know what would happen if one of these driver modules was connected to different types of discharge lamp. There are quite a few ranging from street lighting lamps to various industrial and commercial lamps such as those used in retail outlets. Maybe a more powerful driver would be required or would there be quite a nice effect from being driven at a lower power?
Driving discharge lamps at low power sometimes works, but there's a point where the electrodes suffer for not being hot and in an emmissive state. They sometimes sputter from a small point of light that moves about on them.
![[DRAGON BALL LEGENDS REVEALS ＆ STUFF] LEGENDS FESTIVAL 2024 Special Edition Part 2](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/af0phKxitX8/mqdefault.jpg)
0:31 "This is a folded U Tube." I guess there was "no pun intended". 😂
He knows what he did.
It's a huge U tube 😁
The autogenerated CC is very confused.
@@agurdel so much RUclips, yeah!
I also choose to think the "Where is my pen? Righty-o." at 3:01 was in fact a "writey-o".
Nice little driver, got to say real neon is soooo much nicer than LED fake neon. 2x👍
I prefer the new LED neon, it looks more real.
Just kidding!
Honestly I like both, they have their applications. Of course, nothing will come close to the beauty of true neon, but LEDs are extremely efficient, both power wise and cost wise, and also don't require a noisy (EMI wise)/dangerous power supply.
Nothing beats old school neon.
As a guy who bends and installs neon, hard to agree. LEDs literally solves all the things I hate about neon, and meet or exceed all of the things I love about neon.
I hate the glass shards. I hate working with mercury. I hate burning my fingers. I hate inadvertently stepping on a hose and extinguishing a glass torch. I hate transporting them like they were the last piece of glass in the world. I hate repairing units that I broke pushing the trode into a PK. I hate getting shocked by high voltage. I hate lugging around 30 pound ballasts into ceiling plenums while playing The Floor is Lava off of a ladder. I don't love how neon is dim and miscolored for 5 to 10 minutes until the mercury heats up in the winter.
Oh hell, I must be old and crochety now, I could go on like this for days.
7:33 probably a 22pf cap - the meter was reading about 16pf stray capacitance before connecting
That's a good demonstration of how often I test super low value capacitors. I should have been more careful with lead placement and allowed for inter-lead capacitance.
Cold Cathode units were massively, *massively* popular in the world of pretentious computer cases during the middle 00's. It wasn't enough to have a see-through box, you had to have it lit with cold cathode tubes... And then six weeks later when your PC was out of date you had to buy and all-new one.
What fun times they were.
I still use my bad-tastely modded case and none of my tubes died. 2 decades old tubes and drivers. Not forgetting that my pc is turned on form waking up to after midnight. Talk about sustainability.
The hardware inside was upgraded many times, sometime requiring an angle grinder for installation.
Still running one of those pcs to this day. I don't do emulsion I use real hardware. Ccfl is SO MUCH BRIGHTER than leds
I came up in this era. I was one of the early adopters of water cooling, had a Danger Den spiral aluminum block on my overclocked 1Ghz AMD Thunderbird processor when I went off to college in the fall of 2001. Waterlines went to an external radiator and fan set up which made it a bitch to move because I had to disconnect and drain everything. But I had large fans installed on that radiator running at half speed so damn if the thing wasn’t damn near close to silent which is pretty cool considering my roommates shitty Dell with 1/3 the power whirred and hummed constantly.
Lol, I just posted a comment a few minutes ago referring to that craze of using C.C.L. in PC's.
I still have a bunch of the power supplies left over from that era. The tubes are all long dead or broken, but the supplies are still good
I never grokked that. I usually put my PC on the floor under the desk or in the hutch and couldn't really see it anyway. And now that they are small, they tend to go behind the monitors, where I again can't see them. I need the desk space and the PC was just another thing taking up that precious space.
There are still benders out here! I will make you any neon tube you want. I convert old lanterns into neon lanterns and am always looking for a small transformer, this may do the trick. Usually I am pushing about 18" of 10mm glass with argon (less resistance than neon so you can push more glass).
I've been looking for someone to make me a small custom neon tube for a home decor project. I'll contact you via email, thanks!
I think there's a market on eBay for short straight tubes for collectors. Short and straight to make posting in a tube easier.
Usually used a mixture of neon and argon as it strikes a lot easier and is more forgiving at different pressures. Was pretty popular for outdoor tubes.
@@christopherleubner6633 I use "K4" argon gas, a 75% argon 25% neon mix.
@@DragunSigns the composition of the "blue" gas mixture depends on the climatic zone in which the neon tube is to be used. In Poland, it is a Penning mixture with a composition of 75% Neon and 25% Argon, purity 4.5 (99.995%). For such a mixture, we use a working pressure of 8 Torr in the 15mm tube.
I love neon.
If you have anything neon or have seen it in an old movie you know it is a type of light that creates a mood like no other.
Me, I'm a coward around high voltage.
Always glad to see our host taking apart the small stuff, the overlooked stuff.
Electronic circuits are like jewelry to men, at least to me.
Your channel gave me the courage to unsoder a expensive switch in a salt truck and put a cheep eBay switch back in. It worked and saved $2999.00 plus labor. The new switch was like ¢69. First time trying anything electric thanks 😁👍
Keep in mind that cheap eBay items are not really suited to safety critical applications. But for a non critical application they can be fine.
In 1997, I shocked the hell out of myself with one of these transformers while installing neon bulbs under my car. Learned a lesson that day.
Ah yes, RF burns too. How can one forget those.
@themaddrummer8341
What car, what colour, what colour neon.?
Back in the day, green Ford mach iii, low rider. 300 green leds just didn't cut it.
@@snakezdewiggle6084It couldn't have been too long ago if you were using 300 LEDs.
@davelowets
What makes you say that.?
Do know when LEDs were available to the general public.?
Do you know what year the Ford Mustang Mach III was produced.?
8:11 flush cutters strip much better if the flush side is towards the end of the wire, so the pull of the wire isn't trying to pull the blades apart
That was one of the things I looked for when I was interviewing people for work as assemblers. It is so easy to know who's a pro just by watching them strip a wire and soldering a connection. That or simply handing them a soldering iron and hand tools and asking them to set up their soldering station. It was a beautiful thing to watch a pro set up their soldering iron base in just the right position at just the right angle so they could put the iron back in the holder without ever glancing over at it. I watched 1 interviewee do that first thing and told them they were hired. They asked me if I wanted them to solder anything and I said, "No need." I also watch to see if they break off a short piece of solder with their hands or cut it off with their side-cutters. ( Breaking it off with their hand stretches the solder and squeezes the flux out of part of it, meaning that there's no flux in some of the solder.) Tricks of the trade.
I'd normally use a wire stripper, but these had thick silicone insulation on them.
@@johnwest7993what about those that use the soldering iron to separate the solder?
@@johnwest7993Must have been a rubbish company you hired for / work for.
A real professional doesn’t use wire cutters to remove isolation. That is amateur and hobby level stuff.
Secondly, watching how people are setting up their work station?
What works for you may not work for others, as simple as that.
I do agree however pulling solder apart isn’t the greatest.
I give you 2 stars out of 5.
That's a great tip! thanks!
It's insane that alcohol related content does not get demonetized, but tobacco related content does, all while RUclips runs ads for Mood.
Which is being made illegal in various markets, with Wyoming being the first to ban it
Yeah. You aren’t allowed to say “vape” but RUclips is happy to advertise nicotine gum. Rules for thee and not for me
Demonetization isn't some puritanical censorship but because advertisers can get weary on what their ads are played against as it infers a kind of endorsement. Tobacco related content is demonetized because most advertises don't want to be associated with it not because RUclips has decreed it immoral and punishing creators with demonetization. This all started when ads were being played alongside ISIS recruitment videos and many major brands pulled their ads until RUclips sorted it out.
Thanks for the teardown!
Ordered multipe a few weeks ago. Lovely little unit. I use one to drive the neon tube in a Sox lamp at very low power so the sodium doesn't vaporise and the lamp stays in that lovely pink startup sequence.
Ah yes. I remember now. It was for a SOX lamp.
Sadly, Philips stopped making SOX lamps in 2019.
@@mernokimuvek China makes them now though. Not cheap I'm afraid, but they make them.
@@TheFreak111 The quality is questionable.
@@mernokimuvek shame
I've been helping folks restore pads for DDR arcade machines for a few years now, and a common task is the removal of neon tubes. They originally came with 16 4" tubes in the pads, half pink half light blue. Most prefer LEDs these days, but I've always kept the old neons just since you can't get them anymore. Thanks for sharing some knowledge - I'll make sure to learn more before trying to turn them into art or something like that, but you've given me some great information as a jumping off point!
Edit: didn't expect the dancing stage mention!! Huzzah, I feel recognized! A lot of the early 2000s rhythm games had them, too... Pop'n music, beatmania, guitar freaks, drummania... Usually they'd mainly be halo style lights within the subwoofer assemblies, with the occasional straight one hidden in for accents.
As a school-age lad, I spent more than a few hours in the shop of a classmate's father. He was the local neon sign producer. He spoke of learning his craft in a school in Europe where vast amounts of glass tubing were spoiled in the learning process. He taught me to make "tubulations"--T-shaped junctions. Another bit of misspent youth...
There is an artist in our city, who specializes in murals and posters, called Cukin. You can easily find his work all around as he is pretty famous at this point. He also loves classic neon signs, and he even donated money to bring back one of the most recognized neons, "Adria" in Koszalin, Poland.
Oh man... I've got a PILE of those little power supplies laying around from when the craze in the early 2000's was around of putting the little colored cold cathode tubes in acrylic computer towers. All the tubes I had went dim a long time ago, and I still have a bunch of the power supplies around. Now I know what to do with them. I'm glad I hung onto them for 2 decades. 👍
Good tip!
Can't believe you still have that tube, its been a few years but It's good to see it again. 😀
Hi Clive. As usual, very informative. I have an ACME "Luminous Tube" neon sign transformer that's at least 50 years old. Made in Cuba, New Youk, USA. It weighs about 23 lbs, and it's rated at 12,000 volts, 30 ma. It makes a mean Jacob's Ladder. One must treat this monster with great respect!
The old traditional ones outlast modern electronic transformers greatly.
Soder on good sir, greatings from Minnesota from a hick from the sticks😁
A few days ago, I bid farewell to my neon glassblowing master. He passed away from cancer despite being quite young. He left behind his entire neon signs workshop, vacuum pumps, burners, phosphors, noble gases, and glass supplies. We had agreed before his illness to train me in using this equipment, but we only met twice. I learned to make bends, embed electrodes, welding tubes, but there wasn't enough time to learn how to operate the vacuum system. For now, I'm keeping all the equipment intact, but I don't know how long I'll be able to afford renting the space. Orders for neon glass ceased about three years ago, and since then, the neon market has essentially died out. So, even now, I don't see much sense in training, especially since the raw materials for neon production are now prohibitively expensive.
Good luck. What a conundrum to be in. Sorry to hear about your glassblowing master.
If you would like to get creative, you can use the glass and the equipment to make your own vacuum tubes. Triodes are fairly simple, and so are X-Ray tubes. 😜
I WISH I had access and the knowledge to glass blowing equipment.
These presentations are fascinating.
love your work big clive, im a similar age, and work in HV, initially domestic electrician, I get the odd nod to the great Kenny Everat from your videos, good stuff thanks mate
A good tip when handling neon, that tip off where the tubulation has been made for pumping, that is the weakest most fragile point. Even picking at it with your finger nails can break that. I like using tubulated electrodes now where the tip off pokes out the back of the electrode, that way the rubber cap protects it once its installed
Finally, a good U Tube video
I like the colors CC tubes make. LEDs can make the same sort of pure saturated colors, but the RGB combos that are becoming ubiquitous are not as vivid for unusual colors.
You are correct about the DDR Machines Purple & Blue in the Arrows you stamp on, I'm guessing to much vibration for a standard filament lamp.
I have a few old neon transformers. Very useful for a high voltage source...
That module is quite impressive. I'm used to seeing old school neon transformers in big metal cans filled with PCBs or equivalent.
Lot of retro stuff popping up these days. Watched a channel with a guy making nixie tubes from scratch. I love those things. Very 'retro futuristic' vibe about them.
I agree.... 👍
Very cool
I use vacuum tubes whenever I have the chance when I'm building audio circuits. I love them. VERY power hungry, but the aura surrounding sitting in a dark room with a box full of vacuum tubes glowing, and receiving radio signals is so soothing.
@@davelowets That glow is a very warm, cozy colour. I agree.
That's a lot of plugs for one video. Good info on neon though! Thanks from the US!
I just bought one... Actually two of these the other day!
Surprisingly enough...to drive two old CCTs I had lying around!
Rather the coincidence, as I was hoping you would do a video on something similar.
So thank you in advance
I still have the four in the bottom side of my engine table I built. Pretty handy little units. I triggered them with a sequencer board I bought off ebay to simulate the cylinders firing.
33pF capacitor seems decent, the reading of 37pF is probably just because there are stray capacitance all the way between the instrument and the measured component including holding the probes.
"a folded RUclips, and a much larger RUclips".
that is risky, Google tries to ban every non authorised YT stuff ;-)
Clive will make them fold.
Bigclive is the original u tube er
@6:30 you could have measured the capacitance on the wires, and they would effectively be in series, so it would halve the value, so doubling the measured value would give the cap value without dismantling it.
At the local Museum of Neon Art (MONA) they have classes on how to make neon signs. And the museum is pretty cool, too, though way too small for their collection.
I scrapped a flat screen TV and got several thin cold cathode tubes (4x72mm) from the screen. Royer oscillators were on the main PC board.
I have 3 old neon transformers and 1 electronic one. I got given them years ago for free from a sign shop that had no use for them anymore. One is in a big metal box (Tunwell i think) the other 2 are solid potted blocks with a plastic cover (FART brand). I've had more fun than should be allowed with these things, (tesla coils mainly). All still going strong.
I used to make neon tubes back in the late 90s and early 2000s. Was quite a fun experience. Actual neon tubes generally glow bluish pink when you first make them. When they run for a while on the bombarder the bright orange develops.
The little factory in Mt. Vernon, IL finally closed.
This might be the most times anyone has said U-tube in a RUclips video.
LED halo running lights have actually become standard equipment on a lot of cars in the US. Funnily enough, the neon halos were never really a thing over here, though underglow lights were.
they went into the effort putting an inline fuse into the supply line. In a servicable way.
You could make "angel eyes" kits with a bent acrylic tube, bright LEDs shooting into either end, and scuffing the forward-looking surface to let light selectively "leak" out. First kits were with halogen bulbs, but LEDs on MCPCBs let you customise the color, too, vs just halogen-white (~3000K).
Those are junk though. My neon angels in my Audi are Soo much brighter than the LEDs were in my 755il
It's like the history of vacuum tubes and transistors repeats itself. Glas tubes can be more decorative, retro, unique, artistic etc but solid state LEDs and transistors are just better in every other way, and with only marginal use and production the glas tubes are becoming more and more exclusive.
leds are boring, plasma is the boss.
My late grandfather in St. Louis was in with neon signs when they first came out.
Cheers for your teaching that important and beautiful topic to me! I want neon badly!
Too Cool Big Clive! I used to have a couple of Neon beer signs that sadly got broken. Too bad, they were kind of cool and now I miss them even more. LOL
There is a place here in Boise Idaho called Rocket Neon. I'm sure they'd love a mention.
Next time you try to remove isolation from a lead with snips, turn the snips the other way around, flat face out - that works a lot better ;)
You could measure the two caps in series. Nice video as always :)
I worked at a Sign factory, and the Neon Tube guys were considered GODS!!!!
I managed to commission a full-custom (actual) neon sign off of Aliexpress. 24"x24" for ~£180 delivered about 3 years ago, maybe going on 4 now? Worth taking a look. I'm sure you could ask them to just send you some lengths of tubing, although whether you'll get any benefit in pricing I don't know as those sign listings are priced by size, not by length of tube. Was a wonderful design by the way, a fire/icy rain yin-yang affair: White, blue, turquoise, red, orange, and yellow gas-filled tubing in pretty intricate patterns. Came with driver and EU power cord with UK adapter, and all mounted on a metal frame with both legs to stand it up on a shelf, and a chain to hang it from a wall fixture.
Not sure how I missed this one
I thought angel eyes were a new thing with led, I'd never known them to be ccfk before, I'll Definately have to look into that or getting the bulbs
For neon tubes, is the neon tube voltage higher for a single terminal, or less if it has connections at both ends?
Measuring capacitors in circuit, naughty
High voltage fun arch designs sound fun.
Angel eye lights on cars are LED with a fibre optic tube (since around 2010) The older ones 2001+ used a halogen bulb and fibre optics.
I was unfortunate enough to have to replace a headlight last year on my M5 and the LED modules alone are about £150 each
The ones in my Audi are ccfl tubes. It's all about not buying cheap junk.
These are great for charging up HV Capacitors (via FBRectifier) for emp / cap dump / Electromagnetic coil Linear accelerators.
About 18 months ago I went looking for an NST and holy cow finding one of the 15KV 60mA models without the GFCI was next to impossible. Took me a month of scouring fleabay to find one. Did make a decent Jacob's Ladder and someday I'd like to make a Tesla Coil out of it.
I found myself in possession of a 7.5KV / 30mA sometime during college in the late '90s and had a lot of fun making small jacob's ladders and vaporizing thin wires, among other things. It's got a 1978 date of manufacture stamped on the outside, same year I was born, so I've always been a bit sentimental for it even though i don't have a lot of daily use for it lol.
Back in the day, I was an auto neon fanatic! When they 1st came out l had to defend myself against local law enforcement; I received 5 tickets in a 2 week period. After the first one I went to the Highway Patrol office and talked to them. They told me that neon under carriage kits were not illegal (long as they weren't visible, blue, red or flashed). An officer even gave me a signed paper from the state of SC to show any other officers that I was within the law. 2nd traffic stop (btw, all 5 tickets came from the same officer) I showed him the paper and he read it and said, "I don't care what a state trooper told you,. They're illegal & you won't be running them in my city." Well, I went right back and told the trooper what the officer said & he was ferocious, "he better watch his mouth or I'll pull rank on him". Anyway, I was the talk of the court room and to my surprise the trooper showed up for my hearing and was floored by the amount of tickets I received.... Each ticket was going to cost me $300+ and 4 points. The trooper never had to say a word, the judge looked over everything and dismissed my charges. Then the ticketing officer said, but judge if you would step outside and look at his car...... Judge - "I DON'T HAVE TIME.... because of all these minor violations you have in front of me." Everyone in the court room applauded when the judge slammed the hammer down.
I walked out with my head high! 😉
Thank you ! now I can fix my table top neon art.
I really don't like LEDs as much as I used to because I feel people get very sloppy about using LEDs to light things well, and sometimes don't care when the colors are just horrible for the application. The loss of good esthetics actually looks far worse than I thought it could get in everyday places. Even the older displays that just used bare led dies as pixels were better than the crappy diffusers so often used. They are just token gestures all too often. It's about shaping the light and making it light up something evenly to the edges. I think of making neon and other types of displays that look as good as possible; as something I want to do just because I know how good they can look. And it seems this is becoming more important than just how I feel about it. I hope anyway.
I have a 2007 BMW, the angel eyes are a light pipe with a halogen bulb
They look a little yellow. Looks better with a white LED, matches the colour temperature of the Xenon head lights
I would be surprised if they used actual neons, even for older cars
0:48 I just heard "Here's another RUclips, it's a very big RUclips" there XD
Hello Clive, an old school neon bender (neon glass blower) here, +40 years.
Have you seen these 3" plasma balls on TEMU for around US$5? They have a very small driver which surprised me on how small they are. I was expecting something like what you have in this video. Maybe this could be a Big Clive investigation?
I've featured a USB powered plasma ball and its driver in a video.
Cheap chinese plasma globes often have a flyback power supply, they output spikes in one polarity and a lover voltage wave in the other polarity. The Royer/Baxandall oscillator is much better because it outputs a proper sine wave. But of course course nothing can replace the good old Tesla coil.
Love your u tube! Very elegant and neat
Question about the thinner size tube needing more voltage. Some Googling revealed that neon is about generating plasma in the tube. I suppose it's harder to maintain plasma through a thinner tube?
(P.S. I just got my first lower voltage bench power supply and the first thing I checked was the ground through to mains. Thanks for all of the great safety tips, Clive.)
Those angle cutters strip way better if you flip them around so the flat side is pushing off the scrap insulation. Your angled side is squeezing it tighter against the wire.
CFL lamp power supplies have abilities to light up all sorts of much larger tubes
I remember my teenage years working in a late bar. I had a good relationship with the manager and he would let me program the 0-10v touch pad lighting desk wired to NJD Dimmer packs under the desk. It did everything in there. The pin spots (Par36) the floods, the par36 head scanners, the fancy effects (just motorised lenses spinning around on 3 axis) and most interestingly, the NEON! There were 4 rows of 2 phosphor pink and 2 blood red tubes lining the dance floor, a green pub name sign behind the bar and all the pink neon that lit all the seating areas. I used to have hours of fun on days off going up there and doing a live lighting show by dimming, chasing and beating to the music. It was much more enjoyable than just watching some pre programmed sequence running through, missing beats or not doing enough of one effect. I made it dynamic to the individual song being played. LOVED IT! Even got to keep a cheeky length of tube after a refit, but alas never had the skill to light it LOL Miss those days..Id dread to think how much power ran through there.
I want to make neon signs. Seems like such a fun thing to do.
Fun, frustrating and unfortunately requires quite a lot of expensive gear.
Presumably you could measure the capacitor in the first configuration by metering across the two capacitor outputs and measuring their desires capacitance. Can't remember how capacitors combine in value when in series.
I think the driver might be a Baxandall (yes, the same genius of tone control fame) type judging by the series choke and nearby capacitor _viz_ 2:55. I don't think anyone would use a Royer in automotive applications (where the voltage can vary between 11v9 to 14v2) as Royers are much too voltage touchy, where Baxandalls are much more tolerant of poorly regulated supply. Also, since Royers run by saturation (therefore square wave) they can be very, very noisy.
Had one of these since forever, knew i was gonna use it someday😅
Thank you so much for this video.
"Obsolete technology."
"Find and keep it while it's still obsolete."
the giant neon sign at my work is getting a worse fate than scrap; they're having a signage company cut the ends of the original tubes off, and pull LED tape through with a special diffuser. I figured out that they're DC powered, so the dead sections likely just need the polarity swapped to revive them, but, alas...
Pulling LED into existing glass tubes sounds a nightmare unless they are simple curves or straight sections.
As a glass blowing sign guy who works with tons of both neon and LED I low key love this mash up of new and old. 😂
I predict those LEDs will start failing fast after the first summer in their new glass houses. I really wonder what kind of warranty the company has bought into?
The company could always pay to have new electrodes welded on after they learn a painful lesson.
Now I really want to try this for a laugh at work. I'm envisioning myself vacuuming a string through the tube to assist in fishing the LED tape.
There's a local place here that still makes custom neon tubes...some restaurants and bars prefer actual neon lights...
1:20 - I have a driver exactly like that,sold for CCFL tubes in PC's,before everything went RGB LED. Mine wasn't potted.
I'd love to see a comparison in light intensity between proper neon tubes and the 'ali' led "neon" strips.
The test should be done after a year to see how much the LED intensity has dropped.
10:30 is it worth making a small wooden frame with the wire going to a small terminal block so the life span is increased?
I do have some mounted in plastic bases.
I remember being really excited to get Angel Eyes for my Mini (not MINI) in the early 2000s. They were so expensive and there was a question over legality (at the time) so I never bothered. 😂
I wouldn't be bothered about the PSU for neon not to difficult to make and even the transformer is doable but the Tubes YES ! we must save them and make it a criminal offence to knowingly break one with penalties ranging from life upto death depending on the size and quantity of tubes damaged. Any opposition to this must be met with similar deterrents in mind and the artisans still making them protected at all costs, we cannot allow this art to be lost....cheers
Does the u-tube play videos?
That's what I was wondering also!
Yes with CRT codec
@@FDog16 LOL
I remember going to Piccadilly Circus in London way back in the 1970s and seeing then very large glass neon tube lighting up the side of the buildings and thinking that mush take some one hours or even days to make and bend then glass tubes. Now that art of glass bending must be dead and gone because now it's all LEDs powered signs. But still then where the days and things move on
While watching your video I remembered the time, when I was a kid, when I was doing experiments running a small linear 70W metal halide bulb (yep, one of those eye-blinding lamps that once lit shopping windows) with a similar 6 or 12V inverter. It was quite impressive to see that the inverter was able to strike and stabilize to some extent the discharge inside the bulb, which of course put out a very small fraction of the brightness that it would if powered on the right ballast, but still while at a very low power the thing actually worked. And it was able to shed a bit of light around in a very dark environment.
Grew up in a family sign business with our own neon shop. I designed hundreds of tubes using CorelDRAW and working with our tube bender. Very sad when LEDs took over. Our tube bender went back to school to get his electrical license as he saw the writing on the wall. I still have a large Santa sign I hang on the house during Christmas made of many different colored tubes and running at 30mA. I cringe every time I take it out of storage to hang it. I’ll break it one of these days and that will be the end. There is nobody left in my area bending glass.
In the sign industry everything runs at either 30mA or 60. Most of what I worked with were large transformers. These smaller electrics came out the last decade of neons heyday. We always thought they were less reliable doing service work than the big iron as we called them.
I remember years back getting demonetised on a video of my cat sticking her nose down a mole hole, she wasn't doing anything viscious, just sniffing it, but the algorithm back then (or whatever it was) decided nope, no money for you, not that it made any money even after it was remonetised, just youtube being dumb, as they still are, nothing wrong with miniature smoke machines being dismantled after all... :P
If it makes money for RUclips, it's fine... if it makes money for you, you're punished.
The word "pussy" in a title results in restricted advertising. They seem to associate it with one thing.
I've seen a new neon installation happening. True tubes and custom made. Could be made in Greece, but it was not being installed there.
I find the markings on the case interesting. "INPUT: 12V DC 50Hz" Perhaps I am just misunderstanding something, but that makes no sense to me.
Was just about to comment if Clive's power supply could even provide the special 50Hz DC that this thing requires... 😂
The suggested frequency to use for PWM dimming?
There are some videos on RUclips how to make neon tubes etc, fascinating yet complex stages.
Gaz Yorkshire
Don Smith called these ''overunity'' devices!
Good ❤
It´s a pity that these neon tubes @2:10 are being decomissioned. Those were fantastic in designing retro-style rooms.
I'd be keen to get my paws on a few cold cathode tubes with noble gasses - got a fairly good vacuum pump and built an annealing furnace to make my own noble gas filled glass things but buying noble gasses in sensible quantities turns out to be very, very, very difficult... 🙈
Very rare to get since people still able to make them are becoming endangered species themselves… Here in Belgium all of them are retired, and no place to learn it at school…
"Yo dawg, you heard we like U-tubes, so thanks for putting these U-tubes on our RUclipss."
We all want to know if the video was demonised now Clive.
Great video btw 👍
How are we getting from 12v to something a transformer can use
Haven't ever ran across any actual old neon in my day to day but I do kinda want to buy this driver though. . . Just in case. I would love to find an old neon sign
Thanks for the insight into these drivers, Clive. I don't know if it's possible or practical, but it would be interesting to know what would happen if one of these driver modules was connected to different types of discharge lamp. There are quite a few ranging from street lighting lamps to various industrial and commercial lamps such as those used in retail outlets. Maybe a more powerful driver would be required or would there be quite a nice effect from being driven at a lower power?
Driving discharge lamps at low power sometimes works, but there's a point where the electrodes suffer for not being hot and in an emmissive state. They sometimes sputter from a small point of light that moves about on them.
Circus Voltaire pinball has a neon tube on the playfield.
Is there a safe way to suggest which was flagged? weighted Pineapple perhaps?
I wouldn't be surprised if mentioning the word "demonetised" also makes the video more likely to be demonetised.
Still got my neon collection, 4 pink, one white, and one clear mercury filled unit.