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The front luminous vacuum fluorescent display (FLVFD) technology is a variation of the conventional vacuum fluorescent display technology. Having first been introduced into the consumer electronics market in 1983, FLVFD has seen increasing usage. FLVFD today offers improvements in the areas of visibility, viewing angle, package efficiency, operating temperature, and life. Although vacuum fluorescent displays have been utilized in automotive applications for more than ten years, the front luminous technology has not been used. The main reason for FLVFD's absence has been the highly reflective surface that the internal aluminum wiring forms on the front glass under direct sunlight conditions. This paper will discuss the studies and evaluations which have taken place to eliminate the reflection problem through the use of an optical multi-layer thin film process. This study assures the feasibility of using the FLVFD technology within the automotive environment.

Front Luminous Vacuum Fluorescent Display is a variation of the vacuum fluorescent display technology which offers improvements in the areas of visibility, viewing angle, operating temperature range, and life. This technology has been discussed since the invention of the conventional vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) because of its structural similarity to the CRT. Today, Front Luminous Vacuum Fluorescent Display (FLVFD) technology is becoming a production reality. Since July, 1980, the following areas have been studied and evaluated to bring FLVFD to the state of commercialization: (1) Design study and trial production (2) Development of the transmissive anode and wiring pattern forming technology (3) Development of the phosphor coating technique (4) Study of the visual recognition characteristics (5) Reliability evaluation

Today, there are several kinds of display technologies used in the automobile. Of these technologies, the Vacuum Fluorescent Display has the following advantages: 1. Excellent readability under high ambient light conditions 2. High reliability under severe environmental conditions 3. Multicolor capability 4. Large glass size 5. Graphics flexibility As a result, the Vacuum Fluorescent Display technology is the major type of display technology used in the automobile application. A design trend in the industry is toward the use of graphic displays because of the need to display more information, and to reduce the cost and space factor. Until recently, vacuum fluorescent graphic displays of large area and high resolution had been limited by the lower brightness due to the low duty factor driving condition.

A large scale graphic vacuum fluorescent display was developed. The display is packaged in a panel size of 54.0 x 350.0 (mm) with 24 x 264 pixels (11 digits when a character consists of 24 x 24 pixels). Self-standing grid system was adopted to make finer grid divisions. To attain uniform luminance and prevent cross talk, the quadruplex anode matrix system was utilized. Wire dampers were used as an anti-vibration measure. To prevent thermal deformation of the grid, glass paste was applied to cover the grid bonding.

The adoption of the newly developed self-standing grid construction allows a more flexible layout of the electrodes and location of the grids, while reducing the number of grid leads. These improvements make it possible to minimize the lead pitch and to increase the flexibility of the lead out position. For example, the leads of the new clip-on type displays will allow them to be condensed on one side of the display, while in the case of the ordinary Vacuum Fluorescent Displays (VFDs) the leads are located on both the top and the bottom. By connecting flat cables to the minimized leads, a clip-on VFD was successfully developed, which is excellent in terms of mounting flexibility, circuit maintenance, system cost and function. The manufacturing process and features of the clip-on VFD will be described later.

Vacuum Fluorescent Displays have been manufactured for automotive applications for over six years. During this period, various technological advances, such as increased brightness, multicolors, and decreased power consumption have lead to the rapid expansion of the Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD) market. The following paper will discuss high brightness displays for automotive applications, focusing on large scale displays. These large scale displays are now becoming practical for mass production. We will discuss various design problems that are encountered and how to solve them; plus what performance criteria is targeted for future improvement.

Vacuum Fluorescent Displays (VFD's) for automotive Electronic Instrument Panels (EIP's) have been advancing in recent trends toward large scale systems. These systems offer the attractive appearance of large graphics, the flexibility of both analog and digital style images, and the cost reduction advantages of simpler power supplies, driving circuitry, and assembly procedures. A VFD consisting of all of the primary gages of an EIP was developed and mass produced. This paper will discuss this full size integrated cluster panel.

Head-Up display (HUD) system for automobile is made possible by the recent development of the ultra high brightness vacuum fluorescent display (UHB-VFD). Co-planar technology is used to construct the UHB-VFD. The development of the VFD for automotive HUD will be discussed in this paper.

The Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD), being a self-emissive display device featuring high luminance and excellent readability, has become widely used for automotive applications. The ability to drive it at 12V and to adjust the luminance with the duty cycle, give the VFD high consideration, especially for the display in the car audio system. The number of display segments for the car audio system has increased to more than 50. Adding new functions to the car audio system will increase the required number of display segments. In the 12V static drive system, the number of display segments determines, and equals, the number of driver integrated circuit (IC) output bits required. An increase in the number of anode terminals, required by the increase in display segments, will result in increases in system cost, assembly complexity, space-related problems, etc. This paper reports on attempts taken to solve these problems.