Boeing MCP/Radio LCD display size????

[phil744]

Hello,

Two things really..

1, as this is my first post of many I hope i would like to take this oppotunity to say hi.

2, On the 777 MCP and XPDR/Radio stack you see those nice looking supertwist LCD displays, Does anyone here know exactly what size the digits are?, I am currently making bespoke white displays with status indicators for my setup with excellent result's so far and I just want to clarify that i have all the dimentions correct?

any help would be greatfully appriciated.

[Trevor Hale]

Welcome to the forums. I am sure there is someone here that could help you with this. I just want to say Hi, and welcome you to Mycockpit.org I hope you are ale to contribute your experiences to others in the community.

Best regards,

Trev

[Michael Carter]

Hi! Welcome to the site.

If the 777 radios are a standard 5-3/4" wide as they are in most Boeings with radio heads made by Collins and Gables, you might be able to extrapolate the size of the digits for your bespoke radios.

On the Collins analog dials the numerals are 8.5mm or 11/32" in height.

[phil744]

Cheers Guys,

Its annoying, i have half a 767 pedistal sat here and the only panels missing are the nav radios/transponder and i dont have anything with a display on it,

Just bought a 737 radio fascia from engravity and i will try as you say and work out the size of display from the window cutout, i figure its around 10.77mm and made a simple dual segment display, however it still seems a little big, im sure someone around here may have one to hand and put me out of my misery by letting me know what the official size is.

Anyway here is a pic of last night activitys, its far from finished, and i mean far, but got the pcb etching down to a fine art and soldering 0603 smt LED's (AKA dust!) with a chizel bit sorted, just need to make a few more and try injecting the resin, the picture shows just the trial body without resin so there is a lot of light bleedthrough.

anyway, onwards and upwards.

[phil744]

Right, a little more progress made, ive injected the resin, built a few more PCb's and finally got 1 prototype working, the original light bleed through has almost dissapeared, there is still a lot of glowing coming from the rear through the PC board however once i get round to making the full housing that problem will be cured once and for all.

here is the 1st protype for testing



before anyone states the obvious that i have forgot to include the decimal point i have omitted this for now, the pcb design is complicated enough, and i will only be putting in decimal point as and where there needed, no point in having redundant LED's in there, there expensive enough.



And here it is illuminated, there is no reason why its saying 64, i just wanted to see two different number instead of just "88". unfortuantly the material ive used to construct the body has some air pockets in there that make's the edges look a little rough but this is my first prototype, not bad i say, still think the artwork needs some tweaks though. And these little buggers are bright, which is good because i can add more diffuser to the resin to even the light distribution, not bad when considering the thickness of these is approx 4.5mm.

Work is sending me to China on Thursday for 10 days so i will illuminate all segments and leave it running to see how it behaves, and hopefully go LED shopping whilst in China.

Please feel free to comment or add suggestions.

By the way, i still need the size of the real parts

[Michael Carter]

Wish I could help with the actual digit size, but the display looks great.

Someone with a digtal radio stack should be posting for you soon.

[DAL900]

I don't know if this will help, but look on my page and scroll to the bottom. I sold my radios a few months ago so I cant open them up


http://www.projectb737ng.com/737ng_reference_photos.htm

[phil744]

Hi Guys,

Many thanks to David who emaile me a drawing, i now have the answer i was looking for, if you are curious it is 8mm, so they appear to be a little less than the old analoug ones, i thought they would be bigger, so now i have to serously re-design the layout for this reduction in height.

my part has arrived from engaravity however i am 6000 miles away in china so i will continue once i return, i visited an led factory today who would be quite happy to produce a custom die bonded PCB so i am just awaiting the cost to see if it is feasable.

DAL900, many thanks for you link, that has really helped to clarify the overall dimensions of the radio stack, when i get time i will collate all the info i have and upload them here

Many thanks for your help guys, i will keep you poster once i return home.

[phil744]

You ever get the feeling that you have bitten off more than you can chew? I know I do.

Anyway, im back from my grand tour of China and its time to continue with these little displays. Now i know the measurments i now know its nearly impossible to reduce them to the correct size of 8mm, however at 9mm I can just about do it. So after the grand re-design last night i managed to get 1 dodgy looking prototype up and running, and here it is



As you can tell its a very, very long way off being called finished, but it's progression and in the right direction, i ordered some glass with the same anti reflection coating as used on the real part, coated and etched to produce the mask for the actual segments but i cocked somthing up because they dont quite line up with each other yet. however when placed in a nav radio panel it is starting to look good


And i also realise that i cant cut glass to save my life, i can post a pic of the gash in my hand if you like, i was told to expect blood sweat and tears when constructing a flightdeck, and they where right.

[phil744]

A little closer