Quote:
Originally Posted by mwBarlow
They're called Fresnel Lenses and that might be a pretty good place to start investigating...
|
Thats what i thought at first as well, but thats not what this is. First a frensnel lense would make it look bigger, by refracting light in a circular pattern. and edge lit fresnel lense will not work very well (I have a 9x12 one about 2 ft from me from my first round of research about 4 months ago).
The group of devices that I have been looking at are described as light guides. That general term is any device that can in a slim form factor rotate a light source 90 degrees. These are bipolar transparent lightguides that take advantage of something similar to one way glass. There are other light guide designs that use small etched grooves to cause their refraction, while others still are using some strange grown crystline stuff. There are even talks of using the laser tech for polar light guides (like what is behind your LCD).
The lightwedge it using 2 principals, the major is its geometry, light bounces around in non parelle area till it can escape.. by then its all over the place... and second they have "tempered" the plastic to give it an optical bias towards guiding light out... but about 80+ % of the work is being done by the geometry.
So... what I have so far:
parts for 2 cost about 40$, and it would take me about 5-8 hours to manufacture 2 of them properly... still getting the kinks out of the current design.
These are half built, but i wanted to test some stuff out... That one of it lit up is with just one LED, to make sure the holes I drilled were letting enough light through.
(ps youll find this exact same post in another related thread... about building a custom light for the 505. I was looking at my subscribed threads and posted to the wrong one :-P)