#bombarding — Public Fediverse posts

Last night I bombarded the fattest tube I have ever pumped. At 100mm diameter, 3mm wall thickness and about 5 feet long, its big.
This one is #borosilicate so I had a boro worker shrink it down and make the seals on a glass lathe.

Bombarding this is tricky, as the 19mm electrode glass is only 1.5 mm thick and will heat up more rapidly than the diffuse arc in the larger, thicker tube. To aid in the process, I wrapped the thick tube in the carcinogenic (but oh so insulative) frax blanket- which helped keep the heat in the middle like a jacket while the exposed #electrode extremities could cool down in between blasts from the bombarder.

I started with sorta normal pressures and currents (about 450ma current at about 5 torr of air) and then eventually ramped up to bombarding with about 1100ma of current at up to 17 torr of pressure! The outside took awhile to cool off and #vacuum out.

Gosh I wanna make one with xenon!

#neon #bombarding #big #glass #tube #work #electricity #nyc

Been super busy with work lately. Lots of neon, and some led programming. Here are two neon timesavers. One is combination bends- these two bends on the bottom of this arm part for my boss Patrick's theatrical production were done in one heat- by blocking the ribbon burner fire with my "block" for the straight section.

Excited for Patrick's play. Centered around themes of misinformation and AI, it will be showing in Manhattan, Edinborough and London (maybe more). There will be a larger than life, moving battery powered neon person.

Another speedy trick was making two pumping doublers. This allows me to bombard 4 tubes simultaneously- and pump 10 tubes an hour while distracted with other things (usually that's only 3). If the tubes are too long, the quad pumping won't work however (too much resistance). These ones are all about 3 feet or less.

#neon #production #theater #tricks #bombarding #busy #work #bending #timesaver #brooklyn #nyc #tricksofthetrade #industry