The Most Important Part Of Neon Manufacturing

[vc_row full_width=”” parallax=”” parallax_image=””][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”2028″ style=”vc_box_shadow_3d” border_color=”grey” img_link_large=”yes” img_link_target=”_self” img_size=”300×300″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”1648″ alignment=”center” style=”vc_box_shadow_3d” border_color=”grey” img_link_large=”yes” img_link_target=”_self” img_size=”300×300″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”1647″ alignment=”right” style=”vc_box_shadow_3d” border_color=”grey” img_link_large=”yes” img_link_target=”_blank” img_size=”300×300″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]It’s not the glass bending or that your neon comes out looking beautiful .


It’s the pumping.
I have seen neon signs on window stores on buildings and on pole signs that are not perfect, sometimes it actually the design but sometimes it’s the bending, buy it’s been lit for years and nobody really notices the bad bends only i do.
And i have seen beautifully bend glass but burned out electrodes and very angry sign owners , so in conclusion, be sure to do an excellent and perfect job on the pumping even if you don’t do very well on the bending, a customer will not notice slight imperfections on the bends but will be very angry if his neon doesn’t light up because your pumping was bad.
To be a perfect pumper you have to do this;
1. Make sure your vacuum pump pulls down to at least 3 microns or less (You need a vacuum gauge to check this)
2. Make sure that when you close the main valve you get a one micron drop per minute
3. Make sure you heated the whole electrode shell not 3/4 but 100% of the shell and it’s glowing almost yellow orange and after you have stopped the glow keep on going for at least 40 seconds
4. Make sure you use good quality electrodes not the cheap Chinese ones (EGL or SVP electrodes)
5. If you want perfect neon do your pumping in two stages, first go until the electrodes are starting to glow and then stop and open the main vacuum valve and let it vacuum for about a minute , then start all over again and this time go all the way to the finish.
6. Use clean mercury
7. Use an O ring manifold and a tank system, with the old glass stop cock system and glass flasks there is a risk always of air getting in the system that will ruin your neon , i used that type of system for years and had tons of problems, when i switched to O ring manifold and tank system all my problems went away.
So there you have it my formula for a perfect neon , by the way when i was starting i made all the mistakes a new bender could make, and i didn’t tell anybody, like putting in the gas when the glass was not cool enough, like only heating up half of the electrode, like not knowing how much the pump was pulling down because i didn’t have a vacuum gauge i used the spark leak tester to see the color of the glass in the system while it had already been vacuum in for a while, so the consequences were that neon was going out after a few months or i would have red pink units that took forever to get red, all that went away when i followed the correct way of pumping.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]