[Music playing]
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.
[Intro]
So neon signs are all over the place, lighting up cities, lighting up “exit” signs, lighting
up “open” signs.
It's hard to walk around without seeing a neon sign.
They've been around for about 100 years.
It 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 liquification and then pulling it out of that liquid.
Kind of like how the King of Random was getting liquid nitrogen out of his basement, if you
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 going to 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 finished shape.
We only have a couple seconds to do this because as the glass cools down, it hardens, and will
be in the 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 bends, 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 we're being very careful not to damage anything because
glass is glass, and glass can break.
After the glass is warmed up and the burning 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 going to 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 What's Inside 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.
We'll let it burn for a minute to make sure the tube's good and there are no small leaks,
and 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
lighting white.
And you can see the color change as the mercury drop drips into the entire tube.
We have the electrode on one end burning the blueish 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 2 electrodes completely a circuit inside of each of the glass formations.
One interesting fact is that 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 stand offs with the copper wiring keeping everything in place is what
gives it that insulation.
The cool thing with all 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 6500 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 them 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 a ton for watching, and we'll see you around.
[Music playing]