One-Piece Extruded Lighting Housing With Integrated Optical Element
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing lighting devices struggle to provide customizable and effective needs-based lighting, particularly for illuminating goods on shelves, as they cannot easily accommodate separate optical elements to generate required lighting effects while being protected from environmental conditions and produced inexpensively.
Innovation Solution
A lighting device with a one-piece housing and a separate, rod-shaped optical element that can be easily integrated to influence light, featuring a light-influencing structure and optics configuration for targeted light emission, ensuring protection and cost-effectiveness.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a lighting device uses a fixed housing with integrated optics, then the manufacturing is simple and inexpensive, but the adaptability for different lighting applications is limited
Solution Approach 1:
The lighting device is divided into separate functional modules: a housing with basic protection and a separate interchangeable optical element. This segmentation allows the optical characteristics to be changed without replacing the entire housing, thus improving adaptability while maintaining manufacturing simplicity for the housing itself.
Solution Approach 2:
The housing is designed as a universal platform that can accommodate multiple different optical elements through standardized retention mechanisms. This allows a single housing design to serve multiple lighting applications by simply changing the optical element, achieving versatility without increasing housing complexity.
2Adaptability or versatility
If separate optical elements are added to customize lighting effects, then the adaptability improves, but the device complexity and manufacturing cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
By separating the optical element from the housing, each component can be manufactured independently using optimized processes. The housing maintains its simple extruded profile construction, while optical elements can be produced separately and assembled, avoiding the need for complex integrated manufacturing.
Solution Approach 2:
The optical element is designed to be inserted into and nested within the housing structure. This nesting approach allows the optical element to be housed within the existing housing geometry without requiring major structural modifications, maintaining manufacturing simplicity while adding functionality.
3Ease of manufacture
If the housing is produced as a one-piece extruded profile, then the manufacturing is simple and inexpensive, but the ease of assembling internal components is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
Grooves and retention features are pre-formed into the housing structure during the extrusion process. These preliminary features are prepared in advance to guide and secure the printed circuit board and optical elements, making subsequent assembly straightforward despite the one-piece housing construction.
Solution Approach 2:
The housing maintains its simple one-piece extruded structure for the majority of its volume, but includes localized features such as grooves, channels, and retention lugs at specific positions. These localized modifications provide necessary assembly functionality without compromising the overall manufacturing simplicity of the extruded profile.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The solution allows for the creation of a lighting device that can produce uniform, homogeneous light with customizable effects, effectively addressing the limitations of existing devices by providing a simple and inexpensive way to enhance lighting for specific applications, such as shelf illumination.
Implementation Method 1
The light-influencing structure has a large number of second grooves 10 running transversely to the longitudinal direction of the housing 1 and essentially has the effect that the light emitted by the lighting means 3 (LEDs) is influenced in a scattering manner
Implementation Method 2
In order to prevent looking into the housing 1, the light exit area 4 of the housing 1 consists of translucent plastic
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2
AI summary
A lighting device is proposed in which a circuit board, connected to a power supply and equipped with light sources, is surrounded by a housing (1) enabling targeted light emission. The housing (1) and its light emission area (4) are formed in one piece from a suitably shortened section of continuous profile. To create a lighting device whose housing (1) not only securely protects the functional elements from aggressive environmental conditions and can be manufactured in one piece with its light emission area (4) in a simple and cost-effective manner using very few work steps, but which also offers the possibility of additionally housing a separate optical element (8) for light control, the light emission area (4) is provided with an optical element on its inner surface facing the circuit board (2) for targeted light control.the housing (1) has several first grooves (7) extending in the longitudinal direction of the housing, and the light output area (4) is integrally provided with a light output surface on its outer side facing away from the circuit board (2), wherein at least one retaining lug (9) is formed on the inner side of each of the two longitudinal walls of the housing (1) to accommodate a separate optical element (8) integrally provided with a light-influencing structure.