saneon

Welcome aboard FMS ! Quick question for Mike : I was told by my local sign supplier last week that the long cylinder caps for tubelated electrodes will no longer be available because they were being discontinued . Does FMS manufacture these caps for their electrodes or do you know a supplier that does ? Seems my local suppliers are deciding to keep less and less neon products on the shelves. If I have to wait for my supplier to order material every time I need something what good are they ? Do you sell direct ?

Option 1 sounds good : ) They seem to show up here straight off the boat with a sense of entitlement and an attitude that the rules don't apply to them. "No comprende" business license

Any one had experience dealing with illegit sign/neon manufacturing businesses soliciting your clientele ? There are 2 such businesses in my area that i'm aware of that have been operating from their garage for some time now and recently have become more aggressive in their attempts to woo some of my clients away with pricing that is almost to good to pass up. Granted most of the companies that use these guys are barely operating legit businesses themselves but I think the poor economy may have others looking at them as a way to save a buck. I'm pretty sure one is using a local sign company to get his material for him and is giving them their neon in return. All transactions are done in cash so there are no taxes ,no work comp ,no overhead period. Pretty tough to compete with. Not sure what the best way to approach the problem is so I'm looking for advice from anyone that has dealt with this problem with success.

That's very true Not many learning the trade as an apprentice to a skilled sign craftsman any more. Today most pick up the trade in bits and peices as they go on the fly . Lots of trial and error hack jobs out there to show for it.

Thanks Gary I can't believe I'm 45. Where has the time gone? Seems like yesterday I was a 21 year old college student now I have a 21 year old college student. Doesn't seem possible.

I read an interesting book a while back called "the deliberate dumbing down of America" by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. The book outlines how American social engineers are systematically destroying the intellect of American children for the purpose of leading them into becoming compliant human resources to be used by the government and industry for their own purposes . A step towards creating a global socialist society where every one is dependent on the government. I see our glorious trade mags as the deliberate dumbing down of an industry . Where product manufacturers methodically and purposefully try to eliminate the need for skilled sign craftsmen and want to replace them with minimum wage stooge labor. As if there wasn't enough hacks out there already. Just follow OUR simple detailed steps and you too can be a sign man. What a joke the sign industry is becoming.

Agreed . We have a giant self serving mess in Washington. Two months ago I had the honor and privilege to sit and talk to Mr. Robert Simon (a fighter pilot in the 2nd World War) at a business meeting/dinner I was attending. I was amazed at the details he could recall of the events that took place so many years ago. You could still sense the fight in him as he described some of the encounters he had with enemy pilots. A real American hero. Mr.Simon also expressed to me his dissappointment with the direction the U.S. was headed in and said "we have our priorities out of order". He was frustrated with the fact that political correctness and special interest movements are what drive policy today. "We're getting soft" he said as he shook his head. I have to say that when he said that I felt like I should appologise to him for being apart of the generation that dropped the ball. Sadly I will not get that opportunity as Mr. Simon passed away last Friday at age 89. God bless Mr. Robert Simon and the men and women that fought to make our country great .

Welcome to the board. Your buddy hit a rough note when he insinuated that us old timers, neon guys, stoic ancient sign men, aren't quite up to retreating when led folks speak a few "untruths". If there were tons of bulbs, and you were changing to leds - you probably made your customer a happy camper - bulbs don't last a long time. If you replaced neon, which I doubt, your leds would PALE in comparison to neon tubing. No doubt, low voltage, no doubt no breakage, no doubt any idiot can install neon rather than "expenseive craftsmen" as your web page states must be used for neon. What you fail to mention on your website is that neon is 100 per cent recyclable - unlike leds. Neon can always be repaired/replaced unlike leds. For a long time, signs were a craft - now they are a commodity sold at the cheapest price, guaranteed to last until you fall asleep. Your blue, per your website is a whopping 37.5 l/f and EGL horizon blue is 170 l/f. Not a fair comparison I would say. While led rope has its place, like all leds - there are many times that in signs it would be far easier to just use neon and avoid all the headaches - while your led product MIGHT be available for a couple years - neon was, is, and will still available, colors still match, transformers still work, and the neon will be still be burning bright long, long after led products And please tell your cohort - speak kindly of us old timers till he gets the chance to meet us. then he might not speak kindly of us (me) at all. Welcome to the board though - it'll be interesting in the border security how the products fair against each other. gn "gauranteed to last until you fall asleep". LMAO Craft is definitely missing from the sign trade I think many of the quality sign craftsman have either retired or been replaced by a trained monkey

Savings sometimes yes but $5,000 a month..... $60,000 a year? That one I would have to see proof to believe looks like another case of a misplaced decimal point. ooops.

95% of the people pushing the enviro propaganda to boost sales couldn't care less about the environment. It's all about money and how to squeeze as much of it out of the hands of their gullible misinformed clientele as possible. Its a shame that the SOT refuses to identify this problem and has sold their soul to the almighty LED dollar.

They sure don't build 'em like they used to. Looks like they used 1/8" or 3/16" material for the returns on the letters. I remember how huge the forearms on the letter fabricators were when I got my first job in the sign business. One guys forearms were so freakishly huge he went by the nickname Popeye. I saw him bend a crescent wrench 90 degrees with his bear hands. I met some unbelievably talented craftsmen in my first few years in the business. Sad to see the sign industries skill level diminish so much of over the last couple of decades.

Unbelievable. Someone's medications need adjusting.

must be holding stock in Conoco sure hope someone gets it figured out . I'm tired of paying for Samir's new Palace.

Wow , that is amazing Love to see it used in a high performance vehicle . Plenty of power and torque there for sure. I wonder if the oil companies had anything to do with this technology lying dormant for so long ?

"quarity" LED's with easy "instarration"

Things are pretty sluggish in the sign market down here in central Florida. Most of the legit sign shops that I see are in "hunker down and wait it out mode". Of course I still see the "cockroach" fly by night outfits that work for beer still chugging along. I am a native of Columbus Mike. What part of the state is Blain in ?

2 thumbs up on the "ROY" Garett :thumbs: I highly recommend it to any neon/cathode shops that are serious about improving the quality of the lamps they produce. I put over sized electrodes on almost every unit we make now especially the smaller diameter lamps.

LOL. yeah Roy was a big help Speaking of Garett , haven't heard from him in a while or seen him chiming in . Is he on an extended vacation ? Probably too busy inventing cool stuff in his lab .

"Roy" ? What's that ?

Thanks guys, always nice to here that from other vets of the trade .

Thanks Gary, The lighting designer specifications(not sure why these guys get to call out specs)was a 2 lamp system using 990v 200mA magnetic ballasts. We used custom designed ceramic sockets and 100% of the system is dimmable. We used EGL glass 98% of the job was 25mm the other was 15mm where tight spaces were an issue.

More

Below are some pictures of a lighting project we just did for a Convention center expansion in Orlando using 22,000' of tc 3000 white cold cathode lamps. This system manufactured and installed was about 1/2 the cost of the LED system products alone without installation being included. We are starting another large lighting project next month for one of the theme park resorts that have tried the LED linear lighting products and have been very disappointed with their performance. For high color rendering of a wide palette of colors CCFL's can't be beat. For info: contact southatlantic1@bellsouth.net

yeah , sorry about that Gary , I was hoping the Bulls were going to win that series too. Future looks bright for your team though. I guess I'm gonna be a Mavericks fan now. Can't stand Miami!

The tree huggers would love to have us all believe that humans are responsible for the condition of our warming climate.It's how they move their agenda forward. Earth's climate has gone through various heating and cooling cycles since the dawn of time , long before we were ever here and will contiue to do so long after we are gone. It's just the way it is . I liken the environmentalists view of the situation to the Chicago Bulls blaming that one white guy at the end of Miami's bench for getting them knocked out of the playoffs. Lebron James - 25 pts Dwayne Wade - 32 pts Chris Bosh - 28 pts white guy - 3 pts 5 fouls and a technical for arguing his point Makes no sense and there is no science to back it up.