JPH02226014A - Preparation of illumination control film of indicating instrument - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] This bulletin contains application data before electronic filing, so abstract data is not recorded.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Object of the Invention] (Industrial Application Field) The present invention is directed to a method of printing and forming on a dial plate in order to equalize the brightness of the display section on the front of the dial plate when an indicating instrument is illuminated. The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing a lighting adjustment film.

(Prior art) In this type of conventional product, white paint is uniformly applied to the front surface, and black paint is applied over this to mark scales, numbers, etc.
In an indicating instrument with an internal illumination device, which has a transparent substrate coated with the shape of a display index such as a symbol remaining, and a light source installed behind this substrate, a transmitted light adjustment film for uniform illuminance is provided on the back side of the substrate. The printed version was published in 1973-20.
This is proposed in Publication No. 65. The method for manufacturing the transmitted light adjustment film uses a contact screen and a negative film that captures the unbalanced illumination at the position of the dial, forming large dots in bright areas and small dots in dark areas. This ensures that the illuminance is uniform.

However, in the above manufacturing method, the concentration of the transmitted light adjustment film is calculated from the range of uneven illuminance and the target illuminance to be made uniform.
Furthermore, the required halftone dot percentage is determined from the relationship between this density and the original halftone dot percentage, and then the necessary halftone dots are determined by changing the exposure conditions by trial and error when producing the original from negative film and contact screen. % of the original plate, which requires multiple steps to produce the printing original plate, resulting in high costs.Also, the printing density is easily affected by the characteristics of the negative film and contact screen, making it difficult to make the illuminance uniform. It had

In order to solve these problems, instead of obtaining the original printing plate by trial and error depending on the exposure conditions when creating the printing plate from negative film and contact screen, we developed the final printing plate by photographing and developing the negative film at a predetermined density. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 123728/1986 is a device that allows you to predict the print density that will be obtained and set the shooting conditions.
In addition, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 122947/1983 proposes that a color scanner is used to correct intermediate areas defined by each characteristic.

(Intelligence B that the invention seeks to solve) However, in the above-mentioned conventional technology, since the unbalance of brightness is replaced with a continuous tone image using a negative film, there are many steps such as photographing with a negative film, development, fixing, and drying. In addition, the quality tends to fluctuate depending on the conditions during the process such as the sensitivity of the negative film.Furthermore, in the so-called dot generator method using a color scanner, each time the scanning light beam hits the halftone area to be formed, To do this, it is necessary to access the memory element and read out the contact screen data, and the time required for memory access becomes rate-limiting, making high-speed scanning exposure impossible. Since the data of the screen is determined, it corresponds to one square of the base grid, which is the minimum unit of ON-OFF of the light beam, so the resolution is poor and the sharpness of the output image is low.The sharpness should be increased. This has the problem of requiring a large memory and complicated peripheral circuitry, and requiring expensive equipment.

On the other hand, the inventor has developed a method for printing originals compared to the above-mentioned conventional technology by forming continuous tone images and dot images divided into multiple levels from a video signal obtained by directly imaging the brightness imbalance on the front surface of the dial. JP-A-63-61)17 proposes a system that can easily and quickly obtain dot image data that has been accurately converted from video data using a hard copy. However, there is a problem in that it is difficult to accurately reproduce the dot image data on the original printing plate due to the difference in characteristics between the phosphor of the color display and the ink of the hard copy.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a method for manufacturing an illumination adjustment film for an indicating instrument, which is not affected by the characteristics of negative film or hard copy and can print and form an illumination adjustment film with good sharpness through a simple process. shall be.

[Structure of the invention]

(Means for Solving the Problems) The present invention provides a video signal obtained by directly imaging the unbalance of brightness of the display section in front of the dial during illumination, in order to create a printing original plate used for printing an illumination adjustment film. Find the brightness data, which is a digital signal, from this brightness data, find the shading rate, find the dot pattern corresponding to this shading rate,
Numerical control data is obtained based on this dot pattern.

(Example) Hereinafter, an example of the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a device implemented according to one embodiment of the present invention, in which a translucent dial 3 is fixed to an inner unit 2 attached to a case 1, and the surface of the dial 3 is coated with white or other color. With the light-transmitting ink 4 uniformly printed and the illumination lamp 5 installed in the case 1, the video camera 6 captures an image of the front surface of the dial 3 when the illumination lamp 5 is turned on. The image pickup tube surface is scanned with an electron beam, and the obtained electric signal is converted into a video signal by the video signal processing section 7, which is monitored by the display device 8, and the front surface of the dial 3 is determined from the displayed image by the control of the micro combiator 9. A dot image corresponding to brightness is formed, this is subjected to numerical control data processing, and outputted to the drawing device 10, and by numerically controlling the drawing device 10, a printing original plate for obtaining an illumination adjustment film is created.

The microcomputer 9 includes a converter 1) that A/D converts the video signal output in voltage form from the video signal processing section 7, and a reading value memo 1 that stores the luminance data, which is a digital signal read by the converter 1). 2, a CPtJ 13 for control and calculation, and a ROM (read only memory) 14 that stores control programs and various data.
Table memory 1 that stores the relationship between brightness data and shading rate
5, a dot pattern memory 16 that stores various types of dot patterns, and a dot pattern data memory 1 that stores data of dot patterns determined corresponding to the light shielding rate.
7, and a numerical control data memo February 8 for storing numerical control data for performing numerical control according to the dot pattern.

The operation of this embodiment configured as above will be explained.

While moving above the dial 3, the video camera 6 moves a pixel P, which is the measurement unit area of the dial 3 (Fig. 3(a)), for example, 0.333++mX O, 333++m=0.1
) 1++m" luminance measurement is sent to the microcomputer 9 via the video signal processing section 7. The microcomputer 9 sends the video signal for each M element P to the converter 1.
), for example, a total of 256 from level O to level 255.
The brightness data successive processing is performed (Step 1 in Figure 2), which is converted into one of the 8-bit data and stored in the reading value memo January 2 as brightness data (Figure 4).
As a preliminary step, the volume of the video camera 6 is adjusted in advance before measurement so that the maximum value of the video signal from the video signal processing section 7 becomes level 255, which is the maximum level of the luminance data.

Next, a light shielding rate calculation process is performed according to the luminance data of each pixel P.
, ~PI& are taken as a unit area S (FIG. 3(b)), and each luminance data of this unit area S is added and divided by the number of pixels to obtain average luminance data of this unit area S. Then, the shading rate for each unit area S is determined based on the relationship between the brightness data and the shading rate (FIG. 4), which have been set and stored in advance in the double memory 15 (Step 2 in FIG. 2).
).

Next, a dot pattern to be assigned to each unit area S is determined according to the calculated light shielding rate. The dot pattern memory 16 stores a dot pattern to be assigned to the unit area S, that is, a pattern in which one black dot B for shielding is used when the shielding rate is small, for example, when the shielding rate is 50% or less, and 2.
Translucent transparent points used for each pattern (Fig. 5 (a) to (d)) of 1 piece, 3 pieces, and 4 pieces, and when the shading rate is large, for example, when the shading rate is over 50%. Patterns in which one W is provided, two Ws are provided, three Ws are provided, and four Ws are provided (see FIGS. 5(e) to (h)) are stored, and the microcomputer 9 stores the unit area S. For example, in the case of a shading rate of 40%, the unit area S = 1.333mm x 1.333m+
w # 1.774mm+'', the diameter of one sunspot in a pattern with four sunspots B is calculated to be 0.476mm (Figure 3 (C)). Also, in the case of a shading rate of 80%. For, unit area S = 1.774m
m", in a pattern where four transparent points W are provided, the diameter of the transparent points WI is 0.336 ma+ (Fig. 3rd)). In this way, each unit area S
Each dot pattern is assigned, and this dot pattern is stored in the dot pattern data memory 17 as dot pattern data, which is a digital signal (step 3 in FIG. 2).

Note that the number of dots, that is, black points B or transparent points W, is
Although the larger the number of dots, the more they are dispersed within the unit area S and become less noticeable, the diameter of these dots depends on the ability of the printing machine to print and form the illumination adjustment film on the back surface of the dial 3 using the printing original created by the drawing device 10. The minimum dot diameter is determined by It is programmed to be

Finally, in order to output numerical control data for controlling the operation of the drawing device 10 such as a laser photo plotter that creates a printing original, numerical control data is created using the dot pattern data stored in the numerical control data memory 18. Processing is performed (Step 4 in Figure 2).

In this way, in the above embodiment, the microcomputer 9 is controlled while the front surface of the dial 3 is monitored by the display device 8, and a tone pattern corresponding to the brightness of the front surface of the dial 3 is determined and output as numerical control data. This makes it possible to create printing plates more easily and quickly than in the past, which uses negative film to replace brightness imbalances with continuous-tone images. Since the drawing device 10 is controlled by the drawing device 10, a printing original plate for an illumination adjustment film with high sharpness can be obtained without intervening a medium such as a hard copy.

Further, another embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. 6.

In the above embodiment, as shown in FIG.
The shading rate (e.g. 2%) was set so that as the value of the brightness data increases, the shading rate also increases linearly.However, for example, from level 0 to level 54 of the brightness data, the brightness is small. Therefore, we do not consider the shading rate,
The table memory 15 of the microcomputer 9 stores the data in FIG. , it is also possible to set the shading rate to be determined using this data.

Note that the present invention is not limited to the above-mentioned embodiments, and various modifications can be made within the scope of the gist of the present invention. For example, although the dot pattern is assigned to each unit area S, it may be assigned to each pixel P.

〔Effect of the invention〕

The present invention obtains the shading rate of each pixel from the video signal obtained by directly imaging the brightness imbalance on the front of the dial, assigns a dot pattern corresponding to this shading rate to obtain a dot pattern, and uses this dot pattern data. To provide a method for manufacturing an illumination adjustment film for an indicating instrument, which can print an illumination adjustment film with good sharpness through a simple process without being affected by the characteristics of negative film or hard copy by outputting the information as numerical control data. be able to.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Figure 1 is a block diagram of an apparatus to which the method of the present invention is applied;
The figure is a flowchart, Figure 3 (al is a monitor image taken with a video camera, in Figure 3) is an explanatory diagram of the unit area, and Figure 3 (C) (d+ is a schematic diagram showing the state in which dot patterns are assigned to the unit area. An explanatory diagram, FIG. 4 is a comparison table showing the relationship between luminance data and shading rate, and FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a dot pattern. This is a comparison table showing the relationship between 3...Dial board 6...Video camera 9...Microcomputer

Claims (1)

[Claims] (1) In a method for manufacturing an illumination adjustment film that is printed on a dial plate in order to equalize the brightness of the display section on the front of the dial when the indicator is illuminated, a printing original plate for obtaining the illumination adjustment film is created. In order to do this, a video signal obtained by directly imaging the unbalance of brightness for each measured positioning area on the front of the dial during illumination is converted into a digital signal, and a light shielding function corresponding to the brightness is performed based on the digital signal. A dot pattern corresponding to this light shielding rate is determined, and numerical control data for creating the printing original plate with a drawing device is obtained based on this dot pattern. Membrane manufacturing method.