Creating a Unique Illuminated Panel with Prime Products

Custom Fabrication of Illuminated Components

Prime Products is known for a number of different services, but perhaps our most popular offering is our custom fabrication of illuminated panels. Since our founding in 1975, Prime Products has provided custom designed and manufactured illuminated components for a wide variety of applications and industries.

Whether it is light plates, knobs, buttons, overlays, dials, or keypads, we take pride in our industry leading illuminated component fabrication services. Below we highlight a recent unique project to showcase our expertise.

Unique Illuminated Panel for Military Aerospace Company

A major military aerospace company approached us to produce a unique illuminated panel primarily made out of aluminum. Whereas most illuminated panels are designed as a one-piece plastic construction, our customer wanted the panel to be constructed primarily from aluminum. Plastic inserts would be installed for the illuminated graphics. The customer assumed that the inserts would need to be recessed into the panel. We instead proposed installing the inserts flush to the face of the aluminum. With a combination of precision CNC machining, laser cutting, assembly and painting, our manufacturing engineers designed a process to completely hide the seam lines between the aluminum and plastic, making the panel appear as if it was constructed from solid aluminum while still enabling the graphics to illuminate.

Illuminated Faceplate PanelThe project began with complete production drawings from the customer and their design engineers. From this, our team provided advice on elements of their design and they revised their drawings accordingly.. The Prime Products design team ended up with a plan for the project under the below guidelines:

  • Stainless steel helical inserts
  • Plastic inserts made from MIL-PRF-5425, which is a specialized heat resistant acrylic
  • Six DZUS Fasteners, which are quarter-turn lock fasteners that are quite popular in the aerospace industry
  • Laser etched illuminated letters

Prime Products Proprietary Assembly Process

Through a proprietary assembly process, Prime Products was able combine these materials to create a seamless illuminated panel, that is also RoHS compliant.

Our client was extremely satisfied with our ability to create a panel with both aluminum and plastic that looked like one solid surface, and featured illuminated lettering.

If you want to learn more about this our custom fabrication of illuminated component capabilities, or our AS 9100-2009 and ISO 9001:2008 certified facilities, please feel free to contact a Prime Products expert today.


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