The Visual Communications Company (VCC) is a recognized world leader in researching, designing, and developing advanced HMI components. The company’s products provide crucial functionality through illuminated electronic components in industries as diverse as food service, aerospace, transportation and logistics, medical technology, telecommunications, and industrial manufacturing. 

VCC has over 40 years of collective experience as an international producer of highly specialized electronics and has developed the capacity to provide high-end, high-quality products to a broad range of industries. 

Distinguished by innovative design, end-user-friendly assembly, and overall high quality, their product range comes not only with industry-standard guarantees of reliability but a commitment to provide solutions to customers where others can’t.

A Brief History of The Visual Communications Company

The Visual Communications Company was founded in the United States in 1976. Since then, it has become a global leader in the manufacturing of HMI Components. It is a privately-owned company dedicated to quality and excellence in HMI component manufacture and design.

How Many Employees Does VCC Have?

VCC currently has a dedicated, full-time staff of over 200 employees. Since its founding in 1976, the company has created an international production, distribution, and service network to serve its worldwide customer base. This network spans the globe and enables VCC to have a truly global reach.

What Is a Light Pipe?

An engineered light pipe is an optical device or component that is used when an increase in the uniformity of a light source is required or when the light needs to be directed to a specific angle or location. Other names for light pipes include; light guides, light funnels, homogenizers, or homogenizing rods.

What is HMI Illumination Technology?

HMI stands for Hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide and is a trademarked term under the brand name of Osram’s metal-halide gas discharge lamp. 

This unique form of lighting was created for the film and entertainment industry with its needs. 

Hydrargyrum derives from the Greek term for mercury due to the lamp’s use of the element in its function. 

HMI lamps use a mercury vapor blended with metal halides. The mixture is held in a quartz-glass container with a pair of medium arc separation tungsten electrodes. This is quite different from traditional lighting, which uses incandescent bulbs to generate illumination. 

HMI lamps require electrical ballasts to limit the amount of current and supply the correct voltage. The electrical arc between the two electrodes causes the pressurized mercury vapor and halides to become excited, creating an unusually high light emanation compared to traditional lighting. This increased illumination also comes with higher efficiency than standard incandescent bulbs. 

Light Pipes and Light Loss Reduction

Light pipes use LEDs located on the interior of the soft pipe surface. If an LED is fully embedded into the light pipe structure, over 90% of the light emitted will emanate within the light pipe itself. This will allow for a minimum of light loss and decrease the energy required to provide illumination.

VCC Product Catalog

Light Pipes

VCC offers an extremely broad range of light pipe variants, including both flexible modular solutions and rigid vertical or right angle options. This technology will increase the illumination of PCB-mounted LEDs and provides for excellent optical clarity, simple installation, and is extremely cost-effective. 

VCC can provide IP rated, waterproof options where needed and all light pipes are manufactured from optical grade acrylic to achieve the very highest quality of illumination.

• • Rigid Light Pipe solutions
  • Flexible Light Pipes
  • No-Bleed Light Pipes
  • Board Mount Light Pipes

• Watertight Light Pipe solutions

• Panel Mount Linear Light Pipes

• Vertical press-fit board mount LED light pipes

• Press-fit light pipe for surface mount (SMD) installation into PCB boards

EL MOUNT INDICATOR

Panel Mount Indicators

VCC carries one of the broadest ranges of Panel Mount Indicators on the market with a particularly varied array of choices in neon, incandescent, and LED technologies. 

Options include both front and rear panel-mount, threaded bushing, snap-in as well as relampable or non-relampable variants.  Other customization possibilities include a large variety of mounting hole diameters, PCB, wire lead, wire-wrap, solder lug, or quick tab termination.

• • LED
  • Watertight PMI
  • Build Your Own Indicator
  • Neon
• Incandescent

LED Displays

VCC provides high-quality portable, miniaturized, lightweight LED display solutions to a wide array of industries and is at the forefront of this technology. LED displays combine a high light output with lower power usage and a high degree of design flexibility. 

The surface-mount display provides a user-friendly interface and is offered in a wide range of colors making the displays correspondingly more intuitive to use. 

• • 7 Segment Display
  • Capacitive Touch LED Display
• Display Overlay

Circuit Board Indicators

The VCC range of printed circuit board mount LED indicators is extremely broad, varied, and intentionally provides on-site engineering staff with optimal assembly speed and design flexibility.

PCB mounted LED arrays and indicators manufactured by VCC come in both SMD and through-hole variations. Vertical, right-angle, and horizontal mounting configurations are all possible, together with a varied selection of stacking options. 

Other variations include super-bright, bi-color, single-color, and high-bright options. All VCC circuit boards indicators are shock resistant, vibration resistant and are designed to optimize the use of space.

• Right Angle
• Vertical
• Right Angle SMT

LEDS

• Through-hole LEDs
• SMD
• Bi-color LEDs
• Dual AC/DC LED Bulb SP160604W-50K – IP61 Rated
• Dual AC/DC LED Bulb SP160604-50K – Non IP61 Rated

VENTOFLEX

• 48V
• 12~24V

LAMPS

• AC/DC Utility LED Bulb
• Bayonet
• Bi-pin
• Flange
• Telephone Slide

PANEL LENSES & ACCESSORIES

• 3mm
• 5mm
• 10mm

Applications

VCC is a critical player in the design and production of highly specialized electronic components with a wide spectrum of applications across a broad range of industries. These include aerospace and aviation, logistics, transportation and automotive, food service, medical device technology, entertainment, security, studio control, darkroom equipment, IoT, the telecommunications industry, audio/video equipment, and industrial manufacturing. 

If you require any further information about VCCs product range or want to make an order, contact us today.