Couldn't hurt, but you'd still loss a bit bouncing around in the LED body,
even getting relected backwards.  The idea is to get the fibre as close to
the die as possible, a bit like the connectors do.  (Must cut one open one
day.)  I suppose you could grind the top off the LED, and epoxy the fibre to
whatever is left.  After all, (assuming a clear LED) the body just serves as
a lens, which we don't need.  That should work more-or-less as well as
drilling.

Tony


> What about wrapping the fibre and LED in foil and epoxying 
> the outside? I'd imagine it should reduce lost light a fair bit.
> 
> >>> ajsmith@rivernet.com.au 03 Sep 07 18:33:16 >>>
> > IIRC some time ago (years?) someone (Jinx?) was experimenting with 
> > shining  light in Plexiglas by attaching a led on the edge of the 
> > sheet.
> > I have been looking for this thread with no avail. I would greatly 
> > appreciate if anyone that remember that discussion could give me a 
> > pointer to it.
> > Gaston Gagnon
> 
> Agilent have a good PDF on that sort of thing, Google 
> 'Agilent LED light pipe' or similar.
> Quite a few good tips.  Like embed the LED (drill a hole) in 
> the plastic, or epoxy it to reduce losses caused light 
> bouncing off the edge of the plastic.
> It also talks about drilling holes in the LED so you can put 
> a fibre optic cable right over the die, but that's probably a 
> bit excessive.
> Tony

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