15 Dec 2011, 23:54
Hi,
I adopted three broken LCD watches from 1976 this week. The Orient 64100 and Seiko 0634 are no doubt familiar but the (Beltime) Hughes Module is kind of interesting in its own way. It certainly has the feel of an LED convertee rather than the sleek new creations coming out of Japan about the same time.
Functions include Hours, Minutes and Day of Month. No seconds, no month, no day of week
Transparent red plastic front, opaque red plastic back, ceramic PCB, 29mm diameter and 3 Terminal Xtal
Made in Mexico
They managed to cram all of those segments onto a single terminal strip
The backlight design is superb. You have a sort of pentagon slab of acrylic with a diffuse finish on the top side and a full-on mirror film on the back. There is a tiny hole in the top edge of the slab into which is inseted a tiny little bulb on enameled wires. Like a planar light pipe. Functionally it is easily best bulb backlight I've seen on any of my small but growing collection of LCDs.
Heres the gubbins that came with the module. Needs cleaning up a little. The acrylic crystal was blue but the paint was flaking off badly so I cleaned it off (leaving the lettering which seems to have been done properly) so that I can refinish it. That's why it is pictured transparent .
All watches working fine now. The Seiko wasn't really faulty just clogged with dead skin, The Orient needed to be sweared at A LOT but gave up the last few awkward segments eventually. This Hughes just needed a bit of cleaning and encouragement
.
Rgds,
MP.
I adopted three broken LCD watches from 1976 this week. The Orient 64100 and Seiko 0634 are no doubt familiar but the (Beltime) Hughes Module is kind of interesting in its own way. It certainly has the feel of an LED convertee rather than the sleek new creations coming out of Japan about the same time.
Functions include Hours, Minutes and Day of Month. No seconds, no month, no day of week
Transparent red plastic front, opaque red plastic back, ceramic PCB, 29mm diameter and 3 Terminal Xtal
Made in Mexico
They managed to cram all of those segments onto a single terminal strip
The backlight design is superb. You have a sort of pentagon slab of acrylic with a diffuse finish on the top side and a full-on mirror film on the back. There is a tiny hole in the top edge of the slab into which is inseted a tiny little bulb on enameled wires. Like a planar light pipe. Functionally it is easily best bulb backlight I've seen on any of my small but growing collection of LCDs.
Heres the gubbins that came with the module. Needs cleaning up a little. The acrylic crystal was blue but the paint was flaking off badly so I cleaned it off (leaving the lettering which seems to have been done properly) so that I can refinish it. That's why it is pictured transparent
.
All watches working fine now. The Seiko wasn't really faulty just clogged with dead skin, The Orient needed to be sweared at A LOT but gave up the last few awkward segments eventually. This Hughes just needed a bit of cleaning and encouragement
.
Rgds,
MP.