Complex lightguide shapes can be developed to follow the contours of the product styling or deliver light from remote light sources to the illumination target surfaces.
The lightguides are designed to optimise the light transport efficiency, maintaining high brightness and low power consumption, particularly important on portable battery powered products.
POL can integrate other features and functions to the light guide component to ease assembly and support other components in the product.
This helps to reduce the number of components in the product, improves product reliability and reduces cost in complex product assemblies.
The final mechanical light guide design is quite often patterned with laser etched light control structures, machined into the production mould tool surfaces. These light control structures further enhance the aesthetic appearance and function of the illumination to give the final evenness, balance and efficiency in the light transmission.
[Images right, clockwise]
Scanner window with integrated projected illumination function; Innovative injection moulded lightguide, designed to replace a fibre optic assembly, for an electronic product; Automotive interior illumination lightguide; Control panel LED indicator lightguides
POL’s Design for Manufacture (DFM) approach ensures that the final products can be reliably manufactured in volume and assemblies are simplified to lower costs.
By integrating optical and mechanical functions into the light guide designs, with no loss of illumination performance, the number of components and fastenings in the final product assembly can be reduced to improve reliability and save costs. Use of live-hinges, non-return clip features and Poka Yoke design philosophies ensure robust designs, capable for mass manufacture.
POL’s automotive subsidiary Polymer Optics Automotive Limited (POAL) applies this vast experience of light guide design and innovation to various interior and exterior vehicle lighting applications for aesthetic and functional illumination. POAL’s well developed supply-chains produce high volume electro-optical subassemblies directly to Tier 1 and Tier 2 customers supported by full TS and ISO procedural control and support.
Also, POL’s tooling expertise provides simplified tool constructions, with minimised secondary actions in the tools, giving lower tooling costs, extended tool life and easy future maintenance.
POL can help to re-engineer existing products to improve their performance and solve customer’s previous illumination issues.
POL quickly review the product failings, re-design the product to optimise its performance and then modify the customer’s existing tooling to supply working product with the minimum of cost and lost time to market.
A customer had invested in a light guide product to illuminate a rotary switch bezel and had already made production tooling.
However, the product did not work, giving very poor illumination!
POL was contracted to help and analysed the problem using advanced raytracing analyses. Quickly, the problem with the customer’s design was found and POL proposed simple changes to the design to make it work correctly.
POL configured the changes so that they could be implemented into the customer’s existing production tooling, saving the customer a large cost to rebuild the tooling and saving time to market.
