Smart Elevator Illumination | USA

Elevators are required to be installed in buildings higher than 31 meters and defined as “high-rise buildings” in the Fire Service Act. The history of elevators goes back to old days where lifts operated through ropes and pulleys were used before the Common era. It since evolved from human power to water power, and steam power. As electric elevators became prevalent, vertical access inside buildings improved, which generated a sharp increase in high-story buildings.

Buildings that are advanced each year are designed while taking quality and design into consideration with user comfortableness as the important aspect. In such circumstances, elevators are expected to have comfortableness from the three viewpoints of safety, convenience, and design. In addition to elements such as space, the look and feel of materials the cage is made of, floor buttons and indicators, there is illumination inside elevators that plays an important role.

Two roles of elevator illumination and pursuit of comfortableness
There are two roles that elevator illumination on the ceiling play. One is for normal use and the other is to light during emergency. Either way, luminance is stipulated, and it needs to be lit with the power provided by the emergency battery installed in the elevator. Under such circumstances, an elevator designer of an electric manufacturer wanted to make ceiling lights thinner, reduce the weight of the cage, and eliminate the feelings of being encased experienced by users.

To pursue comfortableness of users, not to mention brightness of illumination, but consistencies of lights to illuminate every corners evenly in large space, soft lights to eyes, and design that machines the building are important. How to achieve these points, while assuring safety performance, was a challenge.

Achieve both design and quality with light guide plate-type LED illumination
Light guide plate-type LED illumination of IDEC meets strict quality requirements of elevator illumination such as weight reduction due to thin design, light guide plate specifications, light comfortableness that blends into the environment, etc. It can also meet the demand of energy-saving through small size emergency batteries for emergency. For the request to design where illumination must match the design of the building, where the conventional lights could not effectively meet the needs, the customer was now able adopt the custom-made illumination, with required performance secured.

IDEC was successful to provide both unique design and performance requirements, and also to generate benefit in the aspect of actual operation with maintenance-free products, satisfying the customer. The customer is counting on us for future proposals from IDEC with the expertise of elevator standards and related laws and its abundant product lineup.