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SCHURTER Applicaton Note: Light Pipe

SCHURTER Applicaton Note: Light Pipe
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SCHURTER Applicaton Note: Light Pipe - 1

Light Pipe Application Note IEC Appliance Outlet with Integrated Light Pipe Saves Valuable Space in Smart PDUs New IEC appliance outlet provides status indication SCHURTER’s 6610 series appliance outlet according to IEC 60320-2-2, Style F, is now available with an integrated light pipe. The fiberglass light pipe indicates operational status, or other function status, as an optional feature to standard connectors. It is designed to channel light from LEDs on the pc board to the front of the connector. The new technology offers flexible design options including the number of light pipes, 1-4, as well as options for light pipe lengths and diameters. The flexibility of design allows for efficient customer-specific solutions, while enabling increased opportunity to signal status information from the power grid to the user. its own circuitry and, depending on the complexity of the monitoring system, may require several types of indicating functions. The outlets are capable of providing up to four light pipes, one in each of the four corners of the connector. The side of the outlet with the ground pin provides extra space around the two corners, allowing for the most prominent and thus popular position. overall cost reduction that results from integrating the light indication into the outlet, whereby the need for drilling separate holes and other associated logistical and manufacturing steps are reduced or elim inated. Using intelligence more efficiently SCHURTER’s appliance outlets with integrated light pipe mounted in a PDU Trends in energy efficiency and reliability are largely impacting demand for more intelligent power systems. These systems communicate by gathering information about the grid’s performance in an automated fashion. In fact, the term “smart grid” is already familiar to many users today. However, these trends tend to develop faster in larger scale grids, where load adjusting and balancing, as well peak curt ailment and leveling times, are critical to power reliability, efficiency and the resulting costs savings. These sophisticated systems will only trickle down into our everyday lives if there are more solutions tailored to the users' ease of use. It is only then that simpler methods for taking advantage of intelligent power devices will be further enabled among mainstream users. The SCHURTER 6610 series provides such a solution in the form of a new appliance outlet. The concept is simple, yet clever, in that openings can be provided in the outlet’s plastic flange, allowing for the installation of light pipes. The light pipes installed in the outlet are designed to channel light coming from LEDs mounted on a printed circuit board to the surface of the outlet. Each outlet generally has A typical application consists of power distribution units used in data centers. Today, these units are most likely to have monitoring systems with indicating display panels or controls. These display panels are often centrally located. With SCHURTER’s new appliance outlet, it becomes easier to extend the systems monitoring capabilities from the centralized display to each outlet. Service technicians are able to clearly see which systems are working properly, or respond to required maintenance adjustments. A con nector could, for example, signal an outage with a red LED, or a critical power consumption pattern with a yellow LED. In this way, both repairs and preventive maintenance can be done more simply and efficiently. The integration of the light pipe into the appliance outlet brings about multiple advantages: For one, the many types and number of light pipes available make it possible to completely individualize circuitry that assigns unambiguous signals to each outlet, potentially each corner of the outlet. There’s also the potential for substantial space and cost savings. The indicating light is located as close as possible to the outlet, instead of discretely mounted nearby the outlet, thus leading to a reduction in the strip size altogether, or increasing much needed space to add outlets to the strip. There’s also an Light pipe assembled in 10 A outlet Customer specific solutions The number, arrangement and diameter size of the openings for the light pipe provide flexible options for application specific requirements, also depending on the orientation of the power cord and its impact on visibility. The shape of the outlet and its flange determine the maximum diameters of the flange openings, and thus the selected fiberglass. It is possible to have diameters slightly larger than 3 mm, on the ground conductor side (beveled corners on the housing), as long as it is possible to adjust the punch radius to a correspondingly smaller degree (less than 2 mm) during connector manufacturing. On the line and neutral side of the outlet, it is possible to incorporate light pipe diameters up to a maximum of 1.5 mm.

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SCHURTER Applicaton Note: Light Pipe - 2

Light Pipe Application Note schurter.com/downloads www.schurter.com/downloads Efficient assembly and additional safety Holes for light pipes with a diameter of 3 or 1.5 mm are possible Affixing the light pipe in the appliance outlet can also be done in several ways. For instance, the light pipe can be pressed-in and serrated seated into place. Such processes can be performed during the manufacturing of the fiberglass without an additional production step. It is also possible to have a cylindrical opening with a stud hole in the appliance outlet. Light pipes with a dome head are particularly...

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