Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff
LCD design, is this good enough?
amyk:
--- Quote from: robertbaruch on February 05, 2019, 02:33:07 am ---Supplier C responded with a quote, USD 200 per tooling (so if I screw up and need a fix, I pay another 200) and USD 1.15 each for 2400. That's a lot more than I'm willing to pay. Interestingly, their quote specified 1.1mm glass, with a total thickness of 2.8mm max. Not sure where that extra 0.7mm came from. The original is 2mm thick total with 1.0 mm glass. Anyway, I'll be sending them a polite note saying that I'm going with another supplier.
I can see that small orders is not what Supplier C is going for. Thing is, I'd still be willing to pay $500 if their MOQ were 100. I need to find maybe a smaller supplier that's willing to do small orders. If that's even possible.
--- End quote ---
Sorry to say this, but that is already very cheap for a custom LCD. $1K+ tooling is not uncommon. As for the thickness, they may not be able to source the materials for what you're asking for.
robertbaruch:
Supplier B replied, saying that I really wanted STN rather than TN, I said that was fine. They also were willing to meet my price of USD 2.50/pc at 200 pcs. The "mould" fee would be USD 320. This is definitely within my budget!
I'm actually surprised that they were willing to work with me on this. There can't be much profit in this order. On the other hand, they've apparently been in business for only 2 years so maybe they're more amenable to small orders. :-// Maybe it helped that I gave them gerbers so that they don't have to do any design work. More fool me if I made a mistake in the gerbers.
On a separate track, I thought I'd also explore what it takes to build one yourself. I see that you can get ITO-coated glass from China, which already is an improvement over having to go the Ben Krasnow route of doing your own sputtering (he later just got the ITO-coated glass from ebay as well). I've also been clued in to PEDOT:PSS which is apparently a more friendly version of ITO, but given that I can short-cut the experimentation with just getting ITO glass, I don't really want to experiment with PEDOT:PSS unless I have to.
The next steps would be to see how precisely I can cut the glass into the rectangles required, and how to etch away the ITO with a 0.35mm trace/space. Interestingly, 0.35mm is just about 72dpi, which is was "video resolution" or "screen resolution" back when we had CRTs. Coincidence? The original LCD displays I'm reproducing were from the early 80's.
I haven't done photochemical etching for decades, and my experience was pretty sad (basically laser printing onto a transparency, and tripling up the transparencies to get adequate opacity).
robertbaruch:
Today's update!
Supplier B sent a proforma invoice for USD 320, plus USD 36 shipping, and USD 14 handling. This covers the re-drawing, tooling, and 10 sample pieces shipped in a styrofoam box. The next step is payment (via Alibaba), then they re-draw, send it to me for approval, and when I confirm (or all changes are done), then they'll produce the 10 samples and ship. They said I would receive the samples 20-25 working days after sign-off of the final drawing.
Still haven't received the bare ITO glass to experiment with, it will take a while. In the meantime I can probably look into what chemicals I'll need to make a photosensitive layer on glass. (Thoughts?)
robertbaruch:
about the LCD that I'm making.
TiN:
Thanks for creating this thread, interesting indeed.
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