Edge/side emitting LED

John Larkin posted a good one here about a week ago. But I think his was meant to act as a backlight to a panel something or other. There are plenty of through-hole right-angle LEDs.

tirsdag den 12. november 2019 kl. 01.39.01 UTC+1 skrev Mike Perkins:

led light pipe, it has a enough wiggle to fit in a hole in a panel and on the pcb is just a regular smd led

if a bit of hand soldering isn't out of the question "edge launch" mounting a regular LED through hole LED will work

This Osram family is really nice.

Beautiful colors, especially the blue and orange. We usually shoot the light onto the back of a label that has a frosty window, but it's OK firing into a bare hole in an aluminum panel.

Two on upper right.

This pipe picks up the light from some surface-mount 1206-type LEDs:

I've used something like this for 0603 LEDs:

These look useful, too:

But why does a light pipe, a few milligrams of plastic, cost 5 or 10 time the cost of an LED?

I have used lots of types like these, behind holes in a case:

Mike Perkins wrote in news:qqcuuv$tuq$ snipped-for-privacy@news2.open- news-network.org:

Form factor?

There are teenie tiny SMD LEDs out there and there are fairly large jobs (0603) and bigger.

They certainly look very interesting but don't look suitable for placement on a panelled PCB.

Many thanks, I will bear them in mind for future projects.

Cost is an issue and is another component on the BOM. There is no real problem in placing this LED close to the edge of the PCB.

Why is that?

Because the LED is less than a milligram of plastic?

Because a pick and place machine would generally place from above, and these look as if they need to be placed from the side.

No, ordinary pick-and-place.

Just set them back from the edge of the board, 50 mils or so, so they don't hit the panel. Not too far or the light will spread out.

from the side? they place just like any other SMD component, the top "ledge" is for the PnP machine suction cup

Thanks, it wasn't initially obvious from the photo.