Incom – fiber optics for advanced displays
Incom Polymer Fiber Optic Solutions
June 2015 – At the SID Display Week event, we met with Incom. For over 40 years they have been part of the optics and display ecosystem providing custom hard bonded fiber optic solutions to a variety of industries. These fiber optic solutions are made with both traditional glass and now polymer products.
Due to cost reasons, most OEMS purchase standard sized rectangular displays to be integrated into their products. However, the industrial design of the products may require different shapes, or optical magnification/reduction of the image on the display to the UI of the product. Incom has been creating these custom hard optical solutions to the medical, military, automotive/transportation and consumer products.
These products bring dynamic response with changing displays and advanced graphics to user touch control and buttons, while protecting the internal display from the wear and tear of the external environment. In medical applications, this is a major issue, as the bonded fiber optic product is the external interface and can be sealed for both easy cleaning and to keep from medical fluids. Two additional markets that are utilizing the technology are automotive – where the display may need to be recessed from the control console, and gaming.
The use of the custom shaped fiber optic solutions allows for the creation of buttons that meet industrial design requirements, while allowing the OEM to use standard displays. The custom products have been traditionally made of glass, and these can provide 1:1 optical images as well as magnifying and reducing images to the user interface. For cost reduction, the company now produces polymer fiber optic solutions. Originally only available in a square form factor, the polymer solutions are available in custom shapes including domed top products.
Incom Fiber Optic Solutions with custom shape and curves
The advantage of these products is they provide the same UI and imaging experience of higher PPI displays and also offsets the challenge of getting smaller distributed displays that would have to be connected in the system. The typical application is to have a larger display that has segmented graphics that each image is connected to a fiber optic button or UI display piece. This reduces software development cost as there is a central full UI paint on the display at each time, and the touch screen function is managed as standard single or multi-touch solution with a known touch contact input to respond to.
One of the major design options is made available by bonding a fused fiber optic to a conventional display you can customize the viewing surface to being a curved display (spherical, cylindrical or complex) was previously impossible with a standard display, but is now an option. The technology is robust in that for 30 years INCOM has machined convex and concave curves on these fiber optic product for such systems as military night vision and heads-up displays, bringing this solution to the automotive, industrial and consumer product space. The Incom fused fiber optics can be formed into many different shapes and sizes. When bonded to a conventional display the optics can be customized to have any outer geometry imaginable; circular, triangular, or even a star.
