Let There Be Light - Neon Light That IS
While at the Makers Faire in San Mateo California this past Sunday (May 22, 2011), I saw this woman at one of the vendor booths playing with what appeared to be long, thin, flexible neon light - neon BLUE light - with no obvious power cord visible.
"Can I see that - please, please, pretty please!?" I asked.
She handed The Thing - a small plastic battery pack for two AA batteries, as switch on the side and a button on the top. A short length of black shrink tubing connected the battery pack to what looked like 1/16" diameter flexible plastic tubing. Push the button on the top of the battery pack and the little flexible plastic tubing flowed neon blue. Move the switch on the side and the neon blue light turned off and on and off and on.
"HOW MUCH?!"
$10
"I'LL TAKE IT!"
Here's The Thing - "3-Foot Ice (PCPICE-G3) from CoolNeon (click on Catalogue)
I'm always on the look out for ways to add TRANSMITTED, rather than just REFLECTED, light in some of my turnigs. This THING has some interesting possibilities.
Here's a Quick 'n Dirty example of one possibility - neon light woven in and out of a piece (the piece in the photo is a failed hollow form I'm working on making into a support for a "Stealth Top" I'd done earlier.)
The flexible neon "tubing" is CoolNeon's " 1.2mm diameter Angel Hair and it comes in the following colors:
Some interesting possibilities for this flexible neon tubing . . .