A Tip For Glass Benders

• Juan
• July 15, 2017
• 0
• 685

I found out by trial and error that by doing this your neon will come out better, especially on the red units.
It’s the pumping process that i have been using for more than 25 years and it solved a lot of problems i used to have with my neon.
1.- you start your pumping like you always do, and as soon as you see the electrodes start to get red you stop.
2.- you open the main vacuum valve and let the hot air out of the glass, ( humidity goes out)
3.- You wait about 2 minutes
4.- You start again but this time you go all the way to the finish.
This simple two step pumping has worked for me for years, of course, that to get the best results you have to have a pump that will take the vacuum to 3 microns or less (less is better) and if you do not have a vacuum gauge then you will not know how well your pump is doing and you will be flying blind. The symptom that i am always aware of when a red unit has been pumped and is ready to be burned in is that as soon as i flip the switch to turn on my burning in transformer (15000v 60 ma) the red unit goes to perfect red in two seconds, the small units like 1 foot long take about 3 seconds and the very long ones like 9 feet long tale about 10 seconds, the mercury units depend on the mercury so that is why it’s more difficult to check your pump with those, but in a red unit it’s only the gas, so if your units take more  than that it’s because the pump is not going down on vacuum to where it should.