Full Color LEDs Covered with State-of-The art Epoxy Molding

The territory of channel letters incorporating into LEDs have kept expanding. With this expansion in quantity, the improvement in quality is also steadily increasing and this can be seen by LED channel letters that are introduced on the outer wall of an apartment. In the past, the frequency of using LED channel letters produced by epoxy molding has decreased remarkably because of some of its known problems. However, it has recently achieved an innovative change and now it is getting the attention.

Application on Channel Letters of Apartments
After LED lightings were first introduced in the sign market, a sudden growth has started from 2006, the last year, and as LEDs grew, the range of its application had also increased, and one of the representative areas is channel letters on apartments. On the one hand, it is true that since LEDs is showing sudden growth, the market establishment for price and quality is not done yet. However, with the government LEDs application encouragement, continuous research of LEDs manufacturers and unit cost adjustment according to the development, LEDs market seems to grow and expand in the close future.
With this effort, not only for LEDs itself but also for the channel letters, newer and efficient products are produced, and channel letters on the HILLSTATE apartment wall are a good example of showing state-of-the art products. HILLSTATE is an apartment with a level up meaning that is a new brand of Hyundai Engineering and Construction Ltd., after I-PARK, the existing high quality apartment. The channel letters are pursuing the refinement that the apartment aims for as well as another high quality and technology of the LED channel letters got upgraded a step higher from the existing LED channel sign.

Open-Faced Vs Covered type
In every number of this magazine, we have referred the module selection and consideration in design for open-faced and covered channel sign. Because LED modules has a great light straightness for open-faced channel letters, the production method with simply punched panels was appropriate and by contrast, using the module with a power LED of more than 1W that diffusion is good was appropriate for the covered channel letters. However, in nowadays, these boundary lines are showing a sign of deceasing gradually.
We can confirm this with channel letters on HILLSTATE wall that is under construction. First of all, the LED channel letters used in HILLSTATE is an open faced type. To explain more clearly, it is a case of combination of the strengths from both open-faced and covered type. For existing covered type, there were cases of covering it with cap to clean up the internal module and wires. However, because of the cap, the intensity of illumination was lower compare to the open faced, and for open faced type, there was a case of not solving the waterproof problem 100%. Also, some of open faced type was produced with epoxy molding for waterproof, but there were some problems occurred in maintaining it. An epoxy molding has been rarely applied on open faced channel letters nowadays. When it comes to the channel letters of HILLSTATE, it look like open faced but LEDs were epoxy-molded, and the most different point is that even though it has finished with epoxy molding, maintenance, in another word, the change of module is now possible.

New Technology Makes New Application
Hyung, Min Woo, manager of Jinhwa LED Inc., the professional LED light and application provider insisted that he epoxy molding used for HILLSATE channel letters, was developed after a long period of research, it made the module possible to change individually for maintenance. And by solving the over-heating, another problem from the epoxy molding, also the safety issue was highly strengthened. Also, since the high straight luminance from open-faced type is reflected on the surface of epoxy, it even created surface-radiation effect. This will bring an epoch-making turning point in the depressed epoxy molding LED channel letter market. Things that gave wings to the epoch-making molding technology are LED module and production method. Since installing location of channel letters is the wall of a higher stories apartment, the most critical issue for lightings is the luminance and the visibility.
The LEDs used for application on HILLSTATE is a product of Jinhwa LED Inc., Total of 752 Color Clusters, the full color LED was used for the section requiring high-class graphics.

The Flexibility of Installation and Designing
Effective design can be embodied since each cluster that is formed with continuous connected structure can be transformed in various types. This operates by built in cf-flash program. For the text part, the total of 2,400 monochrome Any LED products for punched channel letters were installed.
Hyung, Min woo, said that ccording to the demand of Hyundai Engineering and Construction Ltd., on the logo part where the full color LEDs was used, we have used a lot of gold and white tone color to reinforce the refinement and it was possible because we have used the LED modules that the color change was possible in the method we wanted?and he added he importance of the LED module for the project?
Considering the flexibility of the logo part, they produced punches to insert the module according to the format of channel letters and not with the simply straight line arrangement punching method. This gives much more natural and smooth feeing in visual impression and simultaneously, it also brings the reduction in the production cost by efficient arrangement.
For frame and channel letters, the panel thickness of 12mm were used, and after twice primer coating on them, it was painted three times with red wine colored urethane coating for finished work.