Looking For A LCD Display That Works For My Product

By Jeffery Fredricks

Custom LCD displays are a very different matter. They need more effort and time to develop, though not so long as most people may think.





In the not so distant past it was atypical for an OEM, or make to design and buy a customised LCD display. The top reason was that the MOQ (Minimum Order Quantities) were very high, the tooling (NRE or Non-Recurring Engineering) was prohibitory and the lead times would stretch out for several weeks. This has changed drastically in the last 4 to five years. Many of the barriers and restrictions have been lessened. Contemporary changes in custom LCD displays:

In the last couple of years there have been many modifications in custom LCD display technology. Many of these changes include new types of display technologies, new manufacturing process and increased potency in the display industry.

These changes include: Faster proto-typing of samples

Lower MOQ

Lower tooling cost for custom color displays

Character LCD Displays







Character LCD Displays, also referred to as alphanumeric modules, have been in the main stream for several years. Common applications of characters include Visa card readers, test and measurement hardware, pool filters, and scales. This display does not offer a range of colours or the ability to display graphics. They are able to display all the numbers, letters and punctuation marks in English. With a change in the controller driver chip other languages can be shown.

These displays are available in standarized configurations like 162. The 1st number, 16, is the quantity of characters, letter/numbers/punctuation marks. The second number, 2, is the number of rows. In short a 162 is two rows with each row holding 16 characters, for has a grand total of 32 characters. The most typical configurations are 81, 82, 161, 162, 201, 202, (204, 401, 402, 404 and 164 decreasing in popularity)

One top merit of the standardized configurations is that the display you purchase from LCD provider "A" will be available from LCD provider "B". This decreases the probability of a single source LCD module.

About the Author:

Jeffery Fredricks is has worked with LCD displays for ten years and his company offers LCD display products like Character LCD Displays, Static LCD, and custom LCD displays.