Mr. Neon

Yeah, one of the answers I got was "You could start selling LEDs made by us" I told them to "f" off as they pissed me off.

Ask them about their so called move to phase out neon as I heard from the local Glantz distributor. Might be just certain locations but I never got my glass order over 2 months old. Funny how they gave me excuses when everyone else was more than willing to get the glass I needed....

I also have screen-printing equipment that we do as well. Make screens, hand print a 4-color job of 1000 shirts.. Today you can get a machine to print the design all out and all you have to do is iron it on....The days of the true skill man or woman seem to be fading.....

Still have my squirrel hair paint brushes when I learned to do lettering by hand...Kinda miss that to be honest...Even got my airbrush to mess around with...Seems the only thing left untouched by machine is bending neon!!!

..and as always if your follow the money...you will soon find the source..

Contractor I bend glass for had a spec job for Best Buy to re-retrofit a few stores in our area from Fluorescent lamps to LED's. The problem was the cost factor and the rate of return on the investment to save money and maintenance cost. The cabinets were not the usual small 4 x 8 styles. These were quite large of about 12 x 6 and up. The initial quote was too much for the stores to do it at this time. Another job was looking at using LED's to replace Metal halides in a few high rise signs situated near the highway. I was shown a product that look something out of a sci-fi movie with LED's all over. The claim was that it would be brighter and (of course) last 10 years with no replacement cost and save money on operating costs. Problem there was cost again. 5 times what a typical re-lamping would cost and no guarantees that it would last or not have any issues..I do not know the manufacture at the time because it was only shown to me bu the contractor. Funny thing is they couldn't get it lit to show me how bright it was supposed to be. I really don't think LED's have caught on in sign cabinets as of yet...Cost seems to be the factor around here as well as how well they put out light compared to fluorescence tubes. Maybe smaller compact sign cabinets would be ideal but the larger ones are still using HO lamps.

..and another point...profitable.

I have come across the same thing with reps calling or stopping by daily it seems. Just this week another one of my neon contracts shut down and went all LED. Why? they are getting LED's so cheap now that the price is less than neon per foot on some brands. The quality of signs today is no what it use to be. Now it is how quick and cheap can I get it for. I can only sit and watch how some of these companies who pretend to go "green" with LED's think they are really saving more in the long run. Not that there are not any good LED's out there but just like neon quite a few years ago, when it went "bad" with everyone making it or some yahoo installing it wrong causing all kinds of problems, I see similar things in the future or worse for LED. There are too many "China' companies trying to get all the business in LED's and flooding the market with cheap designs. I kinda call it the "WalMart" mentality. We have already seen problems with a few national companies that switch to LED....some less than 2 years of being lit. I guess not much can be done until all the "junk" LED's are weeded out over time...Going to leave a bad taste in someones mouth just like Neon did awhile back....

LMAO!!! Great reply to the "claims" of LED's being a cure for all lighting..especially when LED's tout the benefits of efficiency and cost savings...I have always said what if a diode fails in the light strip or worse a couple diodes go bad thus causing less output...what do you do then? And...I do know this does happen and will happen...nothing is perfect.

Wasn't there a sign similar to this or was it this maybe that caught fire after they went "green" An article was floating around the internet that I came across stating that the fire-department initially stated neon was the cause only to discover that it was re-tro fitted with LED's...interesting. I think EGL's web site has the article on archives.