For this week, everything almost works. I focused on drilling mounts into the polycarbonate sheet, allowing for the LED’s to easily be placed. I didn’t realize how many mountings I would need though, resulting in me having to wait a day for more mounts to come in. At the current moment, all of the red and warm white LED’s are functioning as intended. I still need to finish the soldering for the blue LED’s, but I know that once that is done, then the neon sign will be fully functional. I was also able to get the circuit fully working. Below is a quick video of the neon sign and it’s progress.

Some key changes that were made for the neon sign was the design. I choose to go with a simpler design, due to how the previous bench press design wasn’t fully giving the “vintage feel” that most other neon signs had. Most old signs were made of simple shapes, rather than fully animated pieces. Likewise, many also only depicted words, which even furthered my opposition towards a complex design. For this design, I wanted to try and incorporate two images, in order to give that animated feel. The red strip is supposed to showcase a headset symbol and the blue strip showcases a dumbbell.

The only other concern I have is that my transistors get really hot during testing. They do not start smoking, but are just really warm. My plan for them is to use a fan to help dissipate heat.

Update: I was able to get the blue LED’s working after some troubleshooting. They were getting shorted before, but now they are fully bright just like the red LEDs. Below is a video.