Design LED is expecting volume manufacture of products that include the firm’s LED printed light guide technology to begin this year.

For at least one of these applications the Scottish start-up has teamed up with capacitive touch sensing technology from UK-based Quantum Research Group, which is currently being acquired by Atmel. The light guide and touch sensor is expected to appear in white goods equipment, although the firm could not give details of the product.

“We have a number of development projects at the moment which will mean we have to go to a bigger manufacturing partner when they are finalised,” said James Gourlay, technical director at Design LED. One of those projects includes working with a mobile phone manufacturer and others are related to automotive accessories.

Design LED announced at the end of last year that it had teamed up with Quantum and the first volume products combining the two companies’ technologies have launch dates for this year.

Design LED is also looking to expand into other markets and is looking for product designers or to talk to product design companies. “We are looking for executives and senior staff at the moment and we have headhunters working for us. We also need product design people to come up with concepts for our technology,” said Iain Kyle, business manager at the firm.

Design LED supplies a complete part to be integrated into devices and has patented technology for printing light guides which it uses with LEDs.

The result is a flexible sheet just a few millimetres thick within which segmented areas can be illuminated with a number of differently coloured LEDs, allowing a colour changing effect. Combined with capacitive switching, the result is an attractive, variably coloured switching package which has many potential applications.