Customized 7 segment displays

[ali_asadzadeh]

Hi,
I want to design a new product, so I need some customized LED displays, like digits and some characters symbols like V,A,W,KVA etc..
I want to know which companies do that with a cheep price, do you know some Chinese manufacturer? what sort of prices and MOQ should I expect? any Ideas? I like the dave's  idea of custom LCD's, but I need something similar with LED's.

[rhodges]

Could you make it work with 14-segment LED modules? Here is one that looks fun:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/252512641544
It is common anode, 18 pins.

[reboots]

A custom monolithic LED display will cost a lot, and won't save you much assembly. Even large manufacturers will generally use a custom plastic mask and diffuser, designed to fit over a PCB with discrete LEDs. This technique is available even on a hobbyist budget:

https://bikerglen.com/blog/custom-3d-printed-led-bar-graphs/
https://all3dp.com/weekend-project-3d-print-a-sleek-7-segment-led-clock/

The mask could be 3D printed for prototype quantities, and injection-molded for production.

[ali_asadzadeh]

Thanks for the hints, but even lcsc shows some customized LED displays for about 1USD on 100QTY,

https://lcsc.com/products/LED-Displays-Modules_11091.html

So I suspect that we should have some very cheep sources  hidden in china doing custom LED displays.

Please our Chinese members enlighten us

[branadic]

Is this what you are looking for?

http://www.light-bo.com/p-Alphanumeric-LED-Display-161782/14-Segment-LED-Display-161784/

-branadic-

[ali_asadzadeh]

Thanks branadic, I'm not after general 7 segment or 14 segment types, I'm after something completely customized, like these ones from  LCSC or like the custom designed LCD that dave did it in china, it has bar-graph, some digits, ohm symbol etc...


Any way I drop the light-bo and email to see if they do it? any Idea about the prices? or some alternatives? If I have multiple sources usually the price and quality can be discussed more easily.

[ali_asadzadeh]

I did not got any response form them, any Idea?

[branadic]

I've send them a request with pictures of my design today and got a promt response asking for dxf design files. So no problem whatsoever.

-branadic-

[ali_asadzadeh]

It's weird that they did not answered me?  I have used these emails

lightbo3 at lightbo.cn and lightbo at lightbo.cn


This is my email

Dear
Hi,
This is Ali Asadzadeh from ASiDesigner, we are a design house.
 I'm interested in a custom designed LED display, I want to know the tooling charges and your design capabilities, what are the lead times? what's the MOQ? and  finally do you accept RMB?

Best Regards

[Doctorandus_P]

So have a look at a bunch of the displays you found on LCSC.
This datasheet is from a company called "oasistek"
https://datasheet.lcsc.com/szlcsc/1812111709_OASIS-TOF-54541BSG-B4_C344209.pdf

According to the datasheet the company is Taiwanese, not Chinese, but the Chinese do not seem to agree with that.
Other LCSC displays may of course be from other manufacturers.

What sort of numbers are you thinking about?
Have you considered 3D printing or laser cutting ?

[ali_asadzadeh]

So have a look at a bunch of the displays you found on LCSC.
This datasheet is from a company called "oasistek"
https://datasheet.lcsc.com/szlcsc/1812111709_OASIS-TOF-54541BSG-B4_C344209.pdf

According to the datasheet the company is Taiwanese, not Chinese, but the Chinese do not seem to agree with that.
Other LCSC displays may of course be from other manufacturers.

Thanks I have already contacted them too, not any response either

What sort of numbers are you thinking about?
Have you considered 3D printing or laser cutting ?

I do not know, But I think maybe in the range of 100 to 300 USD, laser cutting and 3D printing can not be used because it's for a mass produced product in the order of 1K to 5K units.

[Doctorandus_P]

A few thouasand units is a bit difficult number.
Still doable to print (multiple printers parrallel) but time consuming.
To low a number to justify injection moulding for a reasonable price.

It might be an idea to use a PCB as a front panel and put the segment outlines in copper, but this will have bleeding to close by segments.

China is a huge country with a huge internal market.
In a documentary it was stated once that if a (consumer) product sold less than a million units it was considered a failure.
For a million units you can easily have custom injection moulds made such as for the Oasis displays, but not for the number of displays you have in mind. Tooling costs for injection moulds can easily be EUR 10.000.

Another Idea is to make laser cut stencils, as used in stencils for solder paste. In single quantities these can be < EUR 20, but I have no Idea what costs will be if you buy thousands of them.

You can also have laser cut black acrylic or even plywood (mdf), with a semi transparant window in front of it. This will need a bit of experimenting, but you can get nice results this way. CO2 laser cutters usable for this cost a few thousand EUR, but these are also popular at maker spaces, and can usualy be rented for a hourly fee.

[rhodges]

Another Idea is to make laser cut stencils, as used in stencils for solder paste.
...
You can also have laser cut black acrylic or even plywood (mdf), with a semi transparant window in front of it.

How about soldering ordinary surface mount LEDs on a circuit board where the segments or symbols go. For the window, use frosted plastic for diffusion, and use a silkscreen to paint the rest black.

[ali_asadzadeh]

Finally I got some answers

The tooling charges depend on your design , cost from RMB 500 to RMB 15000.
Samples lead time : about 15-20 working days

so it's around 75USD to 2200USD


I think it's definitely doable! forget about 1 Million units, it's just bool shit in western countries

[Helix_14]

Another Idea is to make laser cut stencils, as used in stencils for solder paste.
...
You can also have laser cut black acrylic or even plywood (mdf), with a semi transparant window in front of it.

How about soldering ordinary surface mount LEDs on a circuit board where the segments or symbols go. For the window, use frosted plastic for diffusion, and use a silkscreen to paint the rest black.

I am trying to do this for a custom project where display has both 7 segment digits and some icons. It works well for the digits. But for the icons, diffused light is not helping as the icon appear blurry. Do you have any suggestion for icons (battery charging symbol or text "min" for timer.

[mysterlund]

I know this has been awhile. But for anyone like me who is looking for an answer here, this seemed promising:

https://www.ynvisible.com/news-inspiration/designing-a-custom-segment-display

[tooki]

I know this has been awhile. But for anyone like me who is looking for an answer here, this seemed promising:

https://www.ynvisible.com/news-inspiration/designing-a-custom-segment-display

That’s pretty nifty. For my final project (the one that counted for graduation) for my apprenticeship, I was a given the assignment to design a low-power driver for a segment e-ink (electrophoretic) display. This says it’s a different technology (electrochromic), but it seems to be driven in a very similar way, just at lower voltages. It’s nice that they offer a proper datasheet, a dev kit, and sample code for it.