I recently made a repair/improvement to one of my previously made plasma light sculptures, when I got it out to take some extra video and realized that one of the two sculptures was no longer lighting the way it is supposed to.

This pair of glass sculptures is filled with krypton gas, which makes them light with a white light. However, I hadn’t lit them in a while and discovered that while one was still white, the other was lighting more of a pale orange/pink color, which indicates that the gas fill had become contaminated because of a small crack or hole in the glass where air was leaking in. If plasma sculptures are completely air tight, the gas fill can last for many years without any problems, but if there is any kind of leak they will start to look different like this and eventually will no longer light unless repaired and refilled.

In addition to refilling the gas and trying to repair what was causing this problem, I also decided to make an improvement to the design of the piece with something I overlooked when I originally made it. The small bit of glass sticking off of the side in picture below is what I originally made; this is from where a thin temporary glass tube (6mm tubulation) was added which connects to the gas filling manifold, and after the sculpture is filled with the gas that temporary side tube is sealed off, leaving a small point. Since this part of the sculpture has to fit into the porcelain base, this was not the best spot to make the tubulation. It made the sculpture extra fragile because this point could easily hit the side of the base as it is moved in or out of the fixture and could more easily break. So a better solution would be to take off the old electrode and replace it but this time, add the tubulation coming off the tip of one of the leaves instead. That’s where it will attach to the gas filling equipment and when I seal it off, the extra point will not look out of place since it is already on the end of a leaf.

This is what it looks like to check for leaks using a high voltage high frequency spark coil:

(This can only be done if the glass is under a partial vacuum.) If there is a leak, a bright white arc of light will form and indicate the exact spot where the hole in the glass is. (Not shown in this video.) The spark coil can also puncture a new hole in the glass if you leave it in one spot for too long or hold it at the wrong angle. If the hole is very small it can take a very long time to find. It seems (after much time trying to find the problem) that the tip of one of the leaves needed to be reinforced with a bit of extra glass. Then it turned out that there was a small crack in the extra glass tubing leading to the gas filling manifold, which took me awhile to realize as I kept searching for what I thought might be another crack in the sculpture itself. I could go on, but I will keep this short and just say that the problem is finally fixed.

After repairing, this is what the two sculptures looked like immediately after re-filling with krypton:

I wasn’t expecting to have to fix this piece, but it was good practice for how to solve these problems and I felt like this time I had a better grasp on all the steps of the gas filling process, though I still have a lot to learn and practice. But now that this is done, I want to next work on making some plasma stars…