Custom light guide solutions require no tooling costs
Custom Light Guide solutions are now available for the first time without the need for tooling investment or excessively large minimum order quantities – 300 pieces is the minimum order quantity. The solution will make a difference to the creative options available and opens-up a whole new world to electronic design engineers who do not have the tooling budgets or volumes to justify tooled custom light guide solutions.
For the first time, any engineer with no matter how small a volume can now specify just about any shape or size they want in two dimensions to create custom area, bargraph or solid strip light guides that are professionally designed using sophisticated techniques and software that are unavailable to most companies. MENTOR’s specialist lighting engineers use their high-level skills and advanced optical design software to ensure that LEDs are optimally positioned to deliver homogenous light with no bleed and provide advice on the LED type to use. All of this is possible with no tooling costs and usual minimum order quantity is 300 pieces.
MENTOR’s M-CUT system is based on precisely machined homogeneous PMMA sheet that depending on the design requirements is either fully-transparent or more normally features special MENTOR-specified diffusing particles. Unlike classic injection-moulded light guides / light pipes, the production techniques used for the MENTOR M-CUT range require no tooling investment. (Depending on complexity, a modest design charge might apply).
Three different types of MENTOR M-CUT 2D custom light guides have been introduced. They will often be used under a foil or keypad but this is not always a requirement. All three types of custom light guides are mounted on the PCB via integrated press-in lugs. Alternative mounting techniques such as clamping or screwing are also possible.
M-CUT 2D custom area light guides – these light guides provide high-quality custom background illuminations for logos, graphics or information areas.
M-CUT 2D custom bargraph light guides – these light guides can be specified with up to 100 individual elements, size and shape being infinitely variable in two dimensions, for example, the bargraph array can be curved to match the curvature of a moulded enclosure.
M-CUT 2D custom solid strip light guides – this is the ideal solution when a solid strip of homogenous light is required, either for cosmetic effect or signalling but more usually, for illuminating text.
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