Electroluminescent panels

flyingcheesehead

flyingcheesehead

Taxi to Parking
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Feb 23, 2005
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iMooniac
Hi all,

I'm curious if anyone here has built an electroluminescent instrument panel? The DA40 has a panel that is done this way and is SUPER good looking and easy to read at night - Unfortunately, I couldn't find a pic that didn't have the glareshield lights on full as well, but if you look at the circuit breakers on the right you can get an idea of how nice it is:

img_7374-1.jpg
During the day, it looks like a standard flat metal panel with white paint, but it clearly is not. Here's a couple of shots from an upper left light switch panel for sale on eBay:
s-l1600-2.jpgs-l1600-3.jpg

I really like the look of that panel, and I'd kind of like to build something similar for the Mooney either next time we do a panel upgrade, or potentially to replace the back seat panels that have the headset jacks as I've already had to repair those. They're currently made of something resembling an acrylic panel that's painted black on one side with translucent white for the letters and backlit by a single incandescent bulb.

Is Diamond using a single inverter behind the panel to achieve this? How big/heavy is it?

Or, have any of you homebuilders made a cool electroluminescent panel like this?

Heck, I'm curious about whether anyone has done anything like this outside of aviation. It doesn't seem to be particularly common.
 
I've done something similar (lucite overlay engraved with the panel nomenclature) but using LEDs and some additional filtering to get low power usage and NVG compatibility. Proper placement of the light sources is key to ensure balanced lighting in the panel.
I wouldn't bother with EL panels and inverters in this day and age of RGB LEDs that allow you to dial in (almost) any color you want. Definitely use more than one EL (or LED) power supply for some redundancy.
 
I started working on it during my build. But the time/cost/return for a "looks cool" feature wasn't going to pay off so I bailed on it. Resources were spent on an annunicator panel.
2016-03-13 IMG_20160313_105337775.jpg
 
I like the idea. Once you have your panel laid out, you could use a piece of acrylic cut to shape, vinyl adhesive letters as a masking. Paint the pilot side flat black or gray or whatever, attach leds behind the words you want to illuminate and paint the back silver, like a mirror, to spread the light around. I might try this...probably experiment on a small piece of acrylic. My daughter has a cricut to cut letters and shapes into vinyl sheet from the computer. Wheels are turning...
 
Thanks! I've got ladder lights that do what they're supposed to but I really like the look of your mask. I hadn't thought of laser engraving the mask, thanks for the idea. There's at least one place nearby that appears to have the capability.

Your site is a gold mine, by the way.

Nauga,
who presses to test
 
I did a lot of work on a Cessna P210 that had electroluminescent lighting of the switch and breaker panels. They were dead. Got to be careful troubleshooting them with the 115 VDC on them. I found that the powerpack was pooched, and replacing it was very expensive (of course) and getting the old one out and the new one in was a bear. It looked like they had mounted the powerpack in a jig and then built the airplane around it. It was in the right side of the boot cowl, up high, between the panel and firewall, behind insulation and blocked by the panel, some instruments and radios, and the glovebox. Had to fool a lot with long tools in nearly inaccessible places. I think I know how some surgeons must feel when they're doing laparoscopic surgery.

Those panels were glass and subject to cracking. Every switch and breaker was installed though them. Every component nut would have to come off. The boss told me that they were worth something like $5k apiece.
 
nauga said:
Thanks! I've got ladder lights that do what they're supposed to but I really like the look of your mask. I hadn't thought of laser engraving the mask, thanks for the idea. There's at least one place nearby that appears to have the capability.

Your site is a gold mine, by the way.

Nauga,
who presses to test
Click to expand...
With respect to “press to test”, I spent a fair amount of time trying to incorporate that feature. I ended up having a discussion with Bob Nuckolls about how to do that. FYI, if you’re flying in a Beechcraft or Cessna, it’s probably got circuits he designed. He told me to not waste time with it. Push to test was important with incandescent bulbs that failed often. With LEDs, you don’t worry about it. You check them during preflight or after startup.
 
donjohnston said:
Push to test was important with incandescent bulbs that failed often. With LEDs, you don’t worry about it. You check them during preflight or after startup.
Click to expand...
It's also an old flight test saying, akin to 'Git 'er done.' :cool:
Still, old habits die hard and I have an annunciator controller that manages one-button press-to-test for all the ladder lights. When it inevitably fails I'll forgo the feature for something less complicated but equally worthy of an old guy. Still needs a slick mask for the lights, tho.

Nauga,
seeking illumination
 
shop.lumilor.com

8oz Starter Kit

Your choice of LumiColor plus accessories needed to apply LumiLor to the included panel and shape. 8oz Backplane 8oz Dielectric 8oz LumiColor 4oz Conductive Top Coat (CTC) 8" x 10" Panel Sample Shape 6" Copper Tape JB KwikWeld Kit Double Press Connector (2) Connector - Male (one required plus...
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This is the product I’m familiar with. Multilayer process but still more paint thickness than not. I’d probably pot spare electrical connections on a panel.
 
Some of them in both the electro-magnetic and audio spectrum.
 
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My involvement with the technology ended somewhere between some life cycle testing and the other engineer looking at sourcing the inverters.

We ran continuous on/off cycles to test for dimming over a period of several months. It was part of my arduino runs everything phase that year….its basically not feasible to wear the paint out from use in an aircraft.
 
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