August 2009 - Design LED innovates industrial vehicle controls for enhanced safety and efficiency

Design LED Products & IGT Industries announce an innovative backlit vehicle-control panel for a range of battery-powered locomotives used by mining businesses worldwide, using its patented printed light guide technology with capacitive touch sensing to enhance efficiency, reliability and safety.

Clayton capacitive switch interface panel

Developed for Clayton Equipment, a leading supplier of locomotive haulage equipment, the LED illuminated display eliminates a conventional array of mechanical switches and incandescent bulbs, and presents large, bright, evenly lit, colour-coded, touch-sensitive icons to the vehicle driver. The panel is clear and easy to use and, thanks to Design LED’s printed light guide technology, delivers a consumer-quality user experience that is cost-effective in low production volumes. In addition the new control panels are sealed to IP67, thereby maximising reliability and enabling easy wipe-clean maintenance.

A printed light guide is a multi-layer panel comprising a flexible PCB, side-emitting LEDs and a screen-printed optical layer. The assembly is built using a combination of proven processes and patented techniques, and can achieve a total thickness of 1mm. Printed light guides allow LED illumination to be distributed uniformly within a defined area, which improves the appearance and performance of many types of industrial, commercial, domestic and consumer products. This technology combines readily with capacitive touch sensing, allowing low-profile control panels presenting innovative graphics and icons and benefiting from having no moving parts.

“Design LED’s expertise helped us deliver a truly outstanding result to our customer, Clayton Equipment,” said Derek McLaughlan of design consultant IGT. “Combining the printed light guide with capacitive touch sensing has created a robust and easy-to-use solution, well suited to the target environment, and having the advantage of low-voltage operation delivering an intrinsically safe solution. We have also been able to implement new features taking advantage of the panel’s colour-changing properties.”

Clayton Train console

Matthew Pearson, business development manager for Clayton Equipment, commented, “The clear, easy to use touch-sensitive instrumentation sets a new standard for modern industrial vehicles and will enable our customers to improve operational safety and productivity.”

Iain Kyle of Design LED added, “The success of this project underlines the versatility of our printed light guide technology, in this case enabling enhanced safety and efficiency in the workplace allowing Clayton Equipment to deliver increased value to customers.”

About Design LED Products Limited

Founded in early 2004, Design LED products have developed and patented a manufacturing technology to embed Light Emitting Diodes within printed light guides. This enables thin, inexpensive, segmented display panels suitable for a range of applications from consumer electrical & electronic devices, automotive, point or sale advertising & industrial keypads.

Design LED aims to become the world leader in printed light products technology in a wide range of markets including consumer electronics, automotive, industrial and point of sale. More than 50 billion LEDs are sold every year into products and Design LED has the opportunity to both displace existing solutions and enable a new generation of products.