Camelot Sign

I'll be there in my usual spot giving out technical information. Drop by the France booth and say HI!

I will be there in my usual spot. Look forward to seeing those who are attending. Dave

I am a definate, coming in Wednesday evening. Looking forward to meeting you face to face Gary!

The PBKM transformers don't have anything hazardous in them. They only contain copper, steel, and asphalt. You may be able to talk to your scrap company and tell them exactly what is in them. Let me know if you need a basic breakdown of the contents and I'll see what I can do. Dave

Right now it looks like I'll be there.

Did they have to use dimmers on red neon that remains the same brightness no matter the outside temp? This was all done in white. You're right, red would have been a definate waste of time and money if done to accomodate for cold weather.

You are right Sean about the signage on a building in Pittsburgh. The city or someone anyway wanted dimmers installed on the neon signage. There were several issues with the installation that prevented them from working. The home run length was too long in quite a few cases. This in itself caused issues. The transformer boxes were not vented. Nice ovens. What they were trying to achieve was a more uniform brightness from summer, when the dimmer would be in effect, and winter when they would need all the light they could get because of the cold. That's about as far as I can go but suffice it to say that the dimming system was bypassed early on. Dave

I saw Vic at the show too but he didn't go into much detail about being let go from Dixie. I was a bit surprised to see him as a consultant.

Judging from what I saw of the site the lamps and ballasts are mainly geared toward the lighting industry. The ballast shown is a typical 2 lamp electronic ballast I would expect to see at Lowe's or Home Depot from Advance or Universal for interior light fixtures. As for the lamps I didn't see much that would tell me the life is extended much. Simply placing cathode shields around the cathodes does not extend the life of the lamp. I didn't see any mention of the lamps in our typical HO lengths either. I do know that the France long life T8 Reliant lamps not only have the cathode shield but the cathode itself is different that the typical fillaments for the T12 lamps. They may see some trouble with that 10 year garentee if they actually honor it.

A STOCKING Distributor being the key here.

I'll be there. Just a short drive away.

Nice pictures Randy. Much better than the ones I have. The ballast used is the France cold cathode ballast.

It does look like a LED border tube segment. The shape isn't quite right for a Leotek product or Sloan. I couldn't tell what "brand" it might be.

It is funny how the initial cost of installation seems to get left out of the equation.

I don't think it's really fair to calculate PF here. The low power factor isn't going to affect their electricity bill much - and it is correctable with a capacitor, a PFC model tranny, or an electronic switching supply (all are over .9 pf) My point in all this was the National Aquar. is probably NOT saving 70% on their electric bill. When working with purely inductive loads such as a neon transformer PF must be used in the calculation for watts. Volts X Amps X PF = Watts. If you only use Volts X Amps the resulting numbers will be almost twice the actual value. Now back to our regularly scheduled thread.

The transformer calculations are pretty close. You are way too kind on the power factor though. Power factor for a normal pf transformer is about .5 instead of the .6 you have. That brings the watts per foot down just a touch. Say about 7.1 watts per foot for 15mm glass below 40 degrees F on a 60mA transformer and 4.0 watts per foot for the 30mA transformer. You mentioned 18mm glass so I'll just pop that in here too at about 5.9 watts per foot for 60mA and 3.3 watts per foot for 30mA. All transformers are of course the 15Kv models.

I find plenty of usefull information here too. Guess since I'm after #5 I'm not really here though.

I had a call today from someone looking for an open core and coil transformer. I know that since UL2161 any open core and coil transformers larger than 3000-volts to ground had to be changed. I know France stopped making them several years ago. What is currently available is the 3000-volt 20mA version. These are being used for Ozone generators so depending on how well tuned the output is there is the resonance issue. I do remember those transformers burning out rather quickly if they happened to go into resonance with the capacitive load.

It is possible. I moved from Manufacturing Engineering, where I didn't see too many people from the outside, to Design Engineering in July of 1996. I moved into designing transformers and ballasts in 2000 which is when I started getting more into the outside world. During that time I worked for Al Smith if that name rings any bells. I know of you Gary but I'm not sure we have met face to face. Dave

My entrance into the sign industry wasn’t planned at all. In fact when I entered I didn’t really know what I was getting into. I was introduced to electricity courtesy of Uncle Sam’s Navy back in the 70’s. After six years in the grey canoe club I went to work building, tuning, and installing electronic instrumentation in chemical plants and an aluminum foundry. My dad was the president of the chemical plant I went to work for and that didn’t really work out to great. It wasn’t that working for him was rough because I didn’t really answer to him. The tough part was that a few others there thought I got special treatment just because I was the son of the boss. The fact of the matter there was that I had to work twice as hard just to prove that there was no special treatment. Anyway, leaving there sent me to middle Tennessee and into an aluminum foundry. That was probably the worst place I have ever worked. It was hot, noisy, and very dirty all the time. The fact that we rotated shifts every week for the first 3 months I was there and then moved out to every month didn’t help either. During this time my wife took on a temporary position at some placed winding transformers. My wife informed me that the factory she was winding transformers for was looking for an electronics technician to work in the winding department setting up the machines and making sure they were winding to the proper spec’s. I applied and was hired on at France in the winding department in 1992. I was fortunate enough to work my way through the company from winding transformers into the manufacturing engineering department making sure the transformers and ballasts were being built properly and improving the manufacturing processes. My next move was into the design engineering department as an electronics technician working on their second generation indoor electronic neon power supply. Then it was on to the secondary ground fault nightmare. Associate engineer was my next position and off I went making sure the magnetic ballasts were built per the design and helped design neon transformers. My first major assignment was to re-create the France cold cathode ballast and transformer line that is in use today. During this time more and more technical calls were being directed to me from sign shops and distributors about how to apply the transformers and ballasts to their installations. This became my full time position with France. From about 2002 until 2008 I was traveling the North East US as the regional sales rep as well as taking all of the France technical support calls. Due to family reasons I had to relocate to Florida so off I went on my own. Camelot Sign came into being. Now I take technical support calls for all types of electrical signage and even do a fire investigation now and then. I may have spoken to quite a few folks on here over the past few years. This November will make it 18 years in the sign industry in one way or another. I would have to say this has been the most rewarding and most fun of all the areas I have worked in.

This may be too late, but I haven't had time to get on here in a loooong while. In the Phila area it's Icon and Priority Signs. I'm not sure if they are doing FL though. I think that NW Sign is doing Florida since they have a facility in Orlando.

I know that NW Signs has a fair portion of Wells Fargo.

I think a lot of the larger distributors are stocking what sells. I know getting some of the distributors to carry certain products is like pulling hens teeth. Most of the time it is because they feel that some items are too expensive to take up shelf space and sit there for too long. Sometimes I wonder if it is even worth going through the distributors for products when they won't carry it. Makes me wonder who is really falling for the LED hype and trying to push neon out. If you can easily get the LED products and hardware and it is very difficult to get the neon hardware, which way would you go if you had to do a quick job?

I know that as far as electrical sign accessories such as 200 housings and such UL 879 put a damper on supplies for a bit. Things should be catching up very soon though as UL gets done listing or recognizing things.

NW Sign Industries (NJ)