Hi,I'm building my ATR72-500 overhead and almost all of the buttons have two lines of text (on the surface of each button): "fault" and "off" or "fault" and "on".I need to illuminate all the "fault" in yellow or red, and the "off" and "on" in white.Then I thought about coloured mini-LEDs but I need a "light guide" to "direct" the led light only on one line of text (a time) trying to avoid light interference on the line of text that has to stay off.Has someone of you ever built an illuminated button with more than one line of text?How did you make the illumination of the button text?Thank you,regards.Bob

it's been done before ..just a thought though .. i have some real F50 parts at home and I replaced the default white light bulbs with colored leds .. not all leds are equal in brightness so it gives me a result that the red indexes are very readable but the yellow ones are not :sso mind that .. maybe it's best to color the index-text and use white leds all over ?

Well...it might be possible to color the text and use white leds...but how can you make the light illuminates the text in a uniform way?I need something that doesn't focus the light of the led in just a point but it should "diffuse" the light all over the text lenght.Regards,Bob

place white translucent piece of plastik between light and index ? don't know might work ..with annunciators I would bother 'bout this situation and use 2 leds/annunciator but with buttons ? c'mon the index is way small enough.

Have a look at my side and click on panels.I show how I made my Korries.The ones shown ars simple ones. AL the others have a light divider in the middle. Remember to use masterial that does not led the light shine through. I used white plexi, so I painted it to block the backlight. ANd also to block the light from the upper led light the lower legend and vice versa.I build this to have the leds about 25 mm behind the legend to get an even distribution of the light on the legend. Experiment, every leds has an other beam of light. I am very happy with the result.regardsNorberthttp://home.wanadoo.nl/norbert.bosch/

Thank you...very interesting and well made !That was what I was looking for.I have one question though:did you glue the whole "korry" on the button surface?If not, how did you make the sliding mechanism of the korry body to push the button on the back? Is there a spring on the back to let the korry go back to the "unpushed" position after you pushed it down?Regards,Bob

I used a cnc machine to cut Korry replicas. For the centre piece with the leds and the text, I machined in two halves, then glued together with aluminium foil between the two halves to shield the two halves light from each other. Then engraved the text onto a 1mm painted clear perpex sheet machined to correct size. Light shines through the text from the engraving.This has provided good light separation.It may sound complicated but is quite simple, just hard to explain.I think Norberts was my original inspiration.David

Hi DavidNice to hear to be inspiration for others, after all the inspiration I got here too.Hi BobI do not use springs or whatever.See my quick drawing attached here.I used method BBlue are the plexibackers, glued to the panel. These contain holes of 3,2 mm. I tapped screwthread into it, to hold the 4 mm rods. These 4mm rods contain the second plexibackerlayer. This 2nd layer contains a microswitch, the travel of it is 0,25 mmBut in the overhead, all the korries would fall out. So I glued 2 matches to the body of the korrie to prevent this (the little red boxes in :(.When I had to do the same thing again, I would use method A. Just glue a 25 x 25 clear plexi part to the alu. Then glue a 20 x 20 mm black painted clearplexi with engraved legend to that one. It can not fall out anymore. If you want to get a more 3d feeling of your panel, just add another 20 x 20 clear plexi in between them. I think you will get the idea now.In the same way I made my annunciators for my 777 overhead. These are glued to the panel. The same design but without a switch.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/139956.jpg

Hi Norbert,well...now it's all clear !I think I will use the solution "A".On saturday I will do some "experiment", especially to find a way to engrave the text of the korry.Thank you, regards.Bob