At Sector67 we have a laser cutter, and it uses laser tubes of special glass and special gases inside, and after a couple thousand hours of use it will eventually die. The gases aren’t really changeable, and even if they were it would be expensive to do. Over the more than decade of owning the laser cutter we’ve had 4 tubes die. Of course Chris kept them, and one of the interns this summer was assigned to make a rack to show them off for some reason. He did, and I was given during my volunteering the task of illuminating them. I ordered some COB LED strips in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Yes, that’s six colors, but the rack had room for 6 tubes, and I wanted to plan for the future, too. I attached the strips behind the laser tubes and put connectors on each one, then made a single cable that had a bunch of connectors on it and brought that down to a nearby outlet where I had a 12V power supply. It worked and looked awesome, but was super bright. I used a motor PWM controller and put it in an old enclosure for something else that I modified, and the project was complete. A knob controls the brightness, and the tubes look super cool, like they’re neon or lasing.
