Today my friend stopped by to chat about a project and I showed her some of the custom color tubes I have been working on. She asked how I might scale it up to make it more efficient...
Well I have been literally using clamps, scraps and masking tape... so I could do a lot to improve... but I thought I would start with this.
Drying the solvents carrying the phosphor powder is important. I took a scrap circle I had lying around and made it into a drying manifold that shoots a weak but steady stream of air across the vertical tubes dissuading gravity and encouraging drying. It mostly worked, but it was starting to get clogged with runoff phosphor goop and due to its 12mm closed in design- would be kinda difficult to clean.
So I made a new one. This one uses a larger diameter, hand pulled scrap and has 8 ports in 10mm and 12mm sizes for more tubes drying simultaneously.