Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff
LCD design, is this good enough?
robertbaruch:
Here's an LCD design which is a replacement for the LCD in a 1980 TRS-80 PC-1 Pocket Computer. Many of these have gone bad due to bad seals between the upper and lower glass, so I'm thinking I could make 100-200 of these and fix every PC-1 in existence :) I measured the (dead) one that I have and found the electrical specifications in the service manual.
The file is in PDF, but I also have an SVG file.
The only think I haven't specified is the font, so I converted the text to SVG paths and hopefully the Chinese manufacturers will be able to produce a mask from that.
What do you think? Is this a good enough spec sheet for someone in China?
robertbaruch:
So I guess this is going to be a project log about getting this thing made. I really don't want to spend more than about $500 total on this project excluding the samples. For a U.S. factory that would be a nonstarter, but let's see what happens with China.
I went to Alibaba and searched for "custom lcd display". I chose three suppliers that had pictures showing LCDs that weren't big LCD displays, that had "gold supplier" status and over three years in business, and sent this message, patterned after this article:
--- Quote ---Hello,
My name is Robert Baruch and I am searching for a reliable supplier of custom LCDs. I came across your company in my research and wanted to get some further information regarding your minimum order quantities and FOB pricing for a 24x1 character LCD with nine indicators. Please see the attached PDF for specifications.
So could you please get back to me as soon as possible with the above information? My email is robert.c.baruch@gmail.com
Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully placing an order with your company.
Kind regards,
Robert Baruch
(Mountain View, California, USA)
--- End quote ---
I know, it seems overly formal but we're dealing with a language barrier here. Messages were sent on 2 Feb, however the Lunar New Year is coming up, so I didn't really expect much in the way of replies. Nevertheless...
Supplier A, with 11 years in business, responded with "I don't understand your diagram. Do you have specs?" I sent a polite "We're going with another supplier" message.
Supplier B responded say they were on vacation until 18 Feb.
Supplier C responded with good feedback:
* The glass should be 1.1 mm (1.0 is not standard, apparently the standards are 0.4, 0.55, 0.7, 1.1 mm).
* They misunderstood my diagram as wanting white on black, which is negative display, not positive display.
* The MOQ is 2400I responded saying 1.1 mm would be fine, I really wanted black on white, and that the MOQ is fine, but I'd like to know the price.
I changed a few things based on supplier C's feedback, here's the latest revision.
robertbaruch:
Oh, here's an image, since you probably don't want to bother with a PDF! This was drawn in Inkscape.
robertbaruch:
Here's an image (ebay) of typical LCD degradation on these things.
Benta:
I doubt if you'll get any joy from your specification.
I strongly suspect that the manufacturer wants a graphic layout of the front plane and the back plane of the LCD (like a top side and bottom side copper Gerber for PCBs).
Just showing the pixel placement and routing is far too much bother for the manufacturer for this kind of volume.
Ask the manuf. what kind of design files are needed, odds are Gerbers could be OK.
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