Homemade Incandescent Lamp (Glass Blowing)

An incandescent lamp made by hand at home using improvised equipment. I learned these techniques from books and by trial and error. The movie makes it look easy, but like Edison, I have had many failures.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• filament
• incandescent
• lamp
• scientific
• glass
• blowing
• hobby
• physics
• science

[hegars1]

have you got any details on building the curing oven?

[teralabUK]

There is some information about the oven on the teralab web site.

[TerboBlitz]

Well done! How low is the vacuum in the lamp?

[teralabUK]

The pump inlet pressure was about 1E-5mBar. I expect the vacuum was quite poor after sealing off though. This was before I built the oven, so it was not baked to remove the water from the glass. Water vapour shortens the filament life.

[glassjb]

you could just score and crack

[teralabUK]

I used to do it that way. The hot wire method is much more accurate and works every time. It also works well on larger tube. I have been cutting 22mm OD tube using this method. Another advantage is that it is easy to cut off very short lengths.

[Instucablanator]

wow cool ! nice video you are truly a scientist and a craftsman ! good on ya mate

[frillcappa]

is that just for fun? its badass im just wondering why 

[randacnam7321]

@deltaxcd For uncoiled filament lamps like this, the convective losses would vastly outweigh the benefits of a gas fill. Gas fill only makes sense when there is a coiled filament so as to increase the apparent diameter of the filament (not the wire diameter) relative to the Langmuir sheath (the plume of heated gas around the filament). Also, most gasfilled lamps use argon/nitrogen, not xenon as xenon is far more expensive.

[deltaxcd]

@randacnam7321

ca you logically prove your statements?

gas filled lamps are quite common usually filled with xenon sometimes under pressure.

most common are halogen lamps that are filled with gas under extreme presurres.

vacuum greatly increase filament evaporation rate, what reduces lamp lifetime. Of course, gas also cools filament slightly, but efficiency loss can be compensated by increasing filament working temperature.

[randacnam7321]

@deltaxcd The lamp needs to be evacuated regardless of the eventual internal atmosphere in order to eliminate any contaminants therein. Also, gas fill in uncoiled filament lamps like this makes no sense, as convective heat loss to the fill gas greatly reduce the lamp efficacy.

[deltaxcd]

This is overkill.

There is no need to evacuate lamps, they will last much longer if filled with inert gas. Vacuum pump is not really required.

I also made atempt to do something similar but it appears nearly impossible not to burn wires, so I decided to use epoxy resin next time.

Hot wire method sometimes just melts wire into glass and then it cracks everything into pieces if power is tuned off.

but anyway it is best for cutting big diameter tubes with thin walls

[catman72]

i'm pretty sure you can salvage Dumet wire from old lamps,

certainly if your glass is COE compatible with the lamp's.

[Heartless6262626]

i find this very interesting have you ever made a neon light?

[coleuber]

whats wrong with home depot??:)

[baldrickaus]

This is good stuff! BTW I was able to buy Tungsten wire in small quantities at small parts dot com. They even shipped to Australia!