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Old 01-10-2005, 07:19 PM
rmjjensen's Avatar
rmjjensen rmjjensen is offline
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I know we have some tech/engineers on here - question about lighting

Basically - I want to do some new style gauge cluster stuff. Where it's extremely dark and the gauges are backlite so you see them - like all the new cars.

I figure the best way to do this is to use CCFL lighting with some inverters. They would be small so I could fit them behind the gauges and heat would generally not be an issue. Plus they should be plenty bright to penetrate the gauge faces and 20% window film on the plastic gauge cover.

I tried this on my old G20 and it looked hot, but I never thought of using CCFLs for backlighting and just gave up. Pealed the tint off and went back to stock with no cosmetic damage to the plastic.

So here's my question: I've noticed that as the tube size increases the overall brightness (in cd/m^2) decrease - which makes perfect sense. But is the tradeoff too much?

the smallest CCFL has an intensity (brightness factor) of 38,000
where as the largest has an intensity of 6,500

So - should I just place large ones in the cluster? Or, should I place the small ones perpendicular to where the bulbs would go? I just don't know if the small bulbs will light up the entire cluster evenly and bright enough.

any ideas? I'm not sure if CCFLs is what the car companies use (acura - lexus) for backlighting their gauges but it makes perfect sense. They're ultra bright, small, generate far less heat than a light bulb, and have a better dispersion pattern than LEDs.

Here's some examples of CCFLs and their respective inverter boards: http://dkc3.digikey.com/PDF/T051/1468.pdf
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