About Us

OPTICAL BONDING PREMIUM METHOD FOR REDUCING REFLECTIVE LOSS  Optical Bonding offers the lowest overall reflection over any other method. By eliminating or reducing reflective loss, a display can maintain a high contrast ratio even in bright ambient conditions.  

Features of Optical Bonding: •  Low reflective loss means higher contrast in high bright environments.
•  500 nit displays become daylight viewable and 800 nit displays become full sunlight readable.
•  Backlight power can be reduced for a low power draw thereby producing less heat.
•  Bonding eliminates the air gap preventing the “greenhouse” effect which causes heat rise.
•  The thermal transmission of the bonding material allows heat to conduct out of the display.
•  Bonded displays with better thermal management will prevent displays from going isotropic (clearing) and turning black.
•  The lack of an air gap prevents moisture from forming under the window in moist or humid environments.
•  Bonding prevents contamination from collecting under the window.
•  Bonding ruggedizes the display preventing damage from shock and vibration.
•  Bonding dampens the cover glass or touch screen minimizing breakage.
•  Bonded displays pass safety tests. Broken cover glass is held in place and will not cause harm to the user.
•  Removable Process- the display, cover glass and touch screens can be salvaged.
•  In process re-workability; production yields exceed 99.5%.

Why is Luminary Optics bonding better than others? Optical bonding is no longer a new technology for enhancing displays. There are many vendors who offer bonding, so what are the differences? Why choose Luminary Optics over the others? Consider the issues associated with bonding. Consider the years required to get good at bonding. In theory, bonding is simple; you merely glue a piece of glass to a display. You may be asking yourself - "what's so difficult about that?" Bonding takes years to master and years of discovery as to what to do and not to do in the process. Bonding is easy if you expect and pay for broken and contaminated displays. Try doing it correctly for over 10 years and keep failed displays below 1%. Suddenly, bonding becomes much more challenging.     Luminary Optics method for bonding: Luminary uses silicone based materials in a proprietary formulation utilized in a direct “Over-the Bezel” style of bonding.  Why? It's superior. The formulation is not merely silicone. Our years of study and formulation development has created a tried and true material that has been subjected to the most stringent tests. Our proprietary material has the highest adhesion and cohesion of most bonding materials and is superior to any “off-the-shelf” silicone formulation.  It can pass full Mil testing, including the “high altitude, rapid decompression” test.   Using the "over-the-bezel" gasket and fill method for bonding keeps the cover glass and display attached to each other throughout shock, vibration and most important, torsion stress.  In torsion stress, displays and cover glass naturally try to bend in separate directions. This causes de-lamination. Our method will not delaminate in most severe torsion conditions.  Best warranty in the business: Bonding subjects the display to ESD and other handling issues.  Experience has shown that relative newcomers to bonding consider display failures of 2% or higher to be reasonable and common.  This “fallout” is unacceptable at Luminary.  Our years of bonding experience have taught us to have less than .5% failure.  Our failure rate is so low that we offer 100% coverage for the display if it should fail under our care.  Issues with other bonding materials: Many bonding companies have merely licensed themselves with bonding material companies.  These material companies are more interested in selling material than training and supporting their new licensees.  Moreover, these materials have properties that are known to have production issues with displays and applications.  

UV cure: Screened glass and masking on the cover glass/touch prevents the UV bonding material from properly curing. The masking will prevent UV light from penetrating the glass and the bonding material will not cure.  It will remain fluidic causing a bonding failure and will create a Removing UV bonding: Some materials are all but impossible to remove or rework.  The material has such high adhesion, it is all but impossible to remove it from the display.  This lack of rework means that scrap and yield costs will be much higher, resulting in higher production costs.

PCAP TOUCH SCREENS WITH CUSTOM FEATURES AND CONFIGURATIONS  Luminary Optics supplies high performance multi-touch Projected Capacitive (PCAP) or Resistive Touch touch screens with the ability to add custom features. Using our knowledge of optics and our lamination expertise, we can supply PCAP touch screens with a variety of enhancements. Starting with a unique "film-film" PCAP construction, the base touch sensor is ultra-thin. After adding a 1.1mm cover glass and 1.1mm ITO filter and bus bar, the entire touch element is still less than 3mm thick.  

Available Standard Sizes:  3.5", 4.3",  5.7",  6.5",  8.4",  10.4",  12.1",  15",  10.1" W, 12.1" W,  15.6" W,         18.5" W,  21.5" W,  24"W   

DURACOAT COVER GLASS- DuraCoat cover glass can be directly laminated to the front of our PCAP touch or your supplied touch sensor. DuraCoat glass is a unique print-free and smudge-free coating applied to the front surface. When the PCAP touch is touched by the operator, there is little to no finger print residue left on the surface of the glass.  Should finger prints appear, the glass is easily cleaned since the oils of the print will not stick to the glass. Additionally, any cleaner can be used to clean the touch screen. DuraCoat coating is rated at 8H hardness so the touch screen can take physical abuse without scratching off the AR coating. For extreme military or marine environments, DuraCoat cover glass to the PCAP can tolerate over 90 days in a full Mil rated Salt Fog test.   

SCREEN PRINTING- Whether using our DuraCoat cover glass or standard AR glass, Luminary Optics can supply low cost screen printed cover glass to PCAP touch screens. It is now possible to supply a PCAP touch with your company's logo or trademark without committing to high volume. With Luminary Optics bonding material, we can laminate beneath the screened image without the masking interfering with the curing of the bonding material.  

EMI FILTERS- Utilizing our lamination expertise, Luminary can apply either ITO glass EMI filters or ITO heaters to the rear of the PCAP touch screens. The EMI filter is 12 ohms/sq. ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) on a 1.1mm substrate. The bus bar is silver foil tape wrapped in a "U" channel around the edge of the touch, exposing the tape to the front side of the touch screen's cover glass.   

HEATER GLASS- Our heater is made from 12 ohm/sq ITO glass with heater wires attached to the top and bottom edge of the glass. The heater wires are attached with silver epoxy offering a bond stronger than soldering alone.   

DURACOAT AR GLASS
 - SMUDGE-FREE AND FINGERPRINT FREE GLASS 

• REPELS FINGERPRINTS   
• EASY TO CLEAN WITH SOFT CLOTH 
• 8H HARDNESS- 450,000 RUB RESISTANT   
• CHEMICALLY INERT- RESISTS STAINS   
• WITHSTANDS GREATER THAN 90 DAY SALT-FOG TEST (MIL-RATED) 
• LESS THAN .4% SURFACE REFLECTANCE 
• HIGH LIGHT TRANSMISSION 

Dura Coat is a unique AR coating which is ideally suited for anti-reflective applications that require both durability and high optical performance. Dura Coat resists fingerprints and smudges and can hold up to harsh treatment. It also makes an excellent cover glass to any optically bonded display. Additionally, Dura Coat is a great cover glass for Luminary Optics custom PCAP designs. DuraCoat AR is a uniquely formulated window specifically developed for the most rugged outdoor applications. The DuraCoat AR front coating is the most durable anti-reflecting (AR) coating available. The AR coating itself is less than .4% of specular reflectance. More importantly, DuraCoat AR resists all smudges and fingerprints. Due to its low surface tension, smudges literally wipe away without special cleaners using only a soft cloth. The coating is also durable - the AR coating has an 8H pencil hardness which can tolerate abrasions, with up to 450,000 rubs without lifting or damage to the coating. DuraCoat AR can also survive a 90 day salt-fog test as well as a variety of other accelerated acid spray tests.  AR coatings, with their index match properties to air, reduce surface reflections to as low as .35%. With this dramatic change, the use of AR coatings should have broad use and appeal. There is, however, a downside to AR coating. Since the AR coating matches the surface of glass to air, any amount of oil or grease caused by fingerprints and other sources that cling to the glass can cause reflection issues. The oil of a fingerprint is not indexed matched. This means that the fingerprint alone will be reflecting 4.5% of the ambient light while the rest of the display is reflecting little. This means that the fingerprint will all but glow against its surrounding background. This means the display will increasingly show the fingerprints, looking smeared and unappealing. As fingerprints show up on AR glass, the tendency is clean the glass. Unless care is given, most AR coatings can literally be polished off the glass with repeated cleaning.  Additionally, AR coatings are a metal. In a salt-fog application, such as marine navigation, the salt atmosphere becomes corrosive to the AR coating and it can be damaged.

LUMINARY OPTICS PROVIDES EITHER ITO EMI FILTERS OR MICRO MESH GLASS FILTERS FOR SUNLIGHT READABLE LCD APPLICATIONS.  

ITO GLASS FILTERS Our standard ITO glass is 12-ohms/sq. (+/- 10%) vacuum-deposited coating which was selected to provide a good balance between shielding and optical performance. Coatings greater than 20 ohms/sq lack shielding effectiveness and lower ohm/sq. coatings have greatly reduced light transmission and increased light reflection. Luminary can provide this ITO EMI filter laminated to the rear of standard AR glass, DuraCoat AR glass or to the rear side of touch screens (all technologies). To terminate the EMI filter, Luminary offers two styles of bus bar. For economical applications, we provide silver foil tape for no addition charge.  For unique applications, Luminary can supply a silver epoxy bus bar, but this would be at an additional charge.      

MESH EMI FILTERS Luminary provides a unique EMI mesh shielding technology using printed mesh, which allows us to offer EMI mesh shields with very low resistance while providing very low reflection (nearly zero). With a standard resistance of less than 2 ohms/sq., our mesh filters offer maximum shielding while supplying maximum optical performance. Our mesh comes with an 8 micron printed metal line width, spaced at 300 micron pitch. This allows for a 95% aperture opening for maximum transmissivity and light transmission.  As with our glass ITO EMI filters, our mesh filters can be terminated by either conductive tape or silver epoxy paint bus bar.

Viewing Angle Correcting Film - corrects the color inversion and image washout at off-angles in LCDs 

Features: 

•  Increases both color and brightness viewing angle 
•  Corrects viewing cone issues for display set to Portrait Mode 
•  Increases minimum CR from 10:1 to 30:1 
•  Increases effectiveness of active and passive brightness techniques 
•  Improves color saturation at off angles 
•  Corrects Birefringence 
•  Gives TN and WVA-TN LCD cells the view angle of IPS type displays

Birefringence- You may not know what it is but you know when you don’t like it. Birefringence is the function of refracting light in two directions. It is cause of LCD producing poor imagine quality at off-angles. LCDs produce good looking images at a straight on or perpendicular angle but at off angles, particularly above or below the display, the image is either washed out or appears to be in reverse-video mode. The corruption of the image is the fact that as light moves through the cell gap of the liquid crystal, the actual speed of various light frequencies change (refraction). On a black and white image, black is where all frequencies of light are absorbed and white is where all frequencies are passing through. At oblique angles, as light is now passing through a much longer path through the liquid crystal, various light frequencies fall out of phase with the other frequencies. This phase shift causes images to appear either color inverted (reverse video) or with a loss of contrast (pale images). This is especially an issue for displays being placed in the portrait mode. Display OEMs have fixed the left/right view cone issue by using compensated polarizers, but up/down viewing is still very poor. WVA displays use “dual domain” to correct up/down viewing but these displays cannot fully correct the problem. IPS displays are the best but since they have two internal transistor per sub-pixel, they cost more to make and have lower tranmissivity. Luminary Optics VAC film uniquely reconstructs the phase differences after the light exits the display. Added to the front of the display’s polarizer, the image is corrected, bring all of the color into their proper phase, thus correcting the visual anomalies.

Long light paths at off angles causes certain light frequencies to fall out of phase from the other frequencies. This causes objectionable shifts in colors and contrast. VAC film corrects and compensates these differences as light exits the display.