4 Oct
2006
4 Oct
'06
7:49 p.m.
On Wed, 4 Oct 2006, Jules Richardson wrote:
I got to wondering how to make a large numeric display
(a few inches
high) for a potential project. I've only seen 7-segment displays up to
about an inch in height, plus I quite fancy something with more rounded
numerals anyway (all of this came about from thinking about Nixies :)
Building something from individual LEDs looks to be cost-prohibitive,
not to mention power-hungry; I think I figured on over about 125 LEDs
per digit.
I didn't see anyone else offer this suggestion, so maybe this idea would
work...
Use some plastic optical effects fiber with a single LED per numerical
shape. Paint one end of the fiber, polish and heat shrink the LED to the
other and bend the fiber into whatever shape you want. You could easily
layer these. The only downside is that you'll probably have to buy a large
spool of the fiber, but the plastic stuff is relatively cheap anyway. You
won't want bare glass fiber that's normally used for cable splicing. It
won't transmit much, if any, light though the sides. The plastic optical
effects fiber will, as its made to do just that. If one strand wouldn't be
bright or large enough, you could parallel and light more than one strand
with the same LED too, particularly if you use a high intensity LED.
(Yes, I'm still alive, just not really reading the list much these days.
Still have my "collection", more of it is in storage right now do to space
and time constraints, but I hope to change that this next year.)
-Toth