SCHURTER Applicaton Note: Light Pipe0 pages

Light Pipe

Application Note

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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

Connectors

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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