Side light fibre system M-Fibre: Illuminated Lines in Product Design

Atmosphere – Individuality – Design
A consistent design concept in company and office buildings, hotels, restaurants or at exhibitions evokes the corporate identity and values while corporate colours raise brand awareness and convey a unique ambience and identity. The M-Fibre system turns light into a corporate design element. At the design and innovation conference materials.cologne, MENTOR equipped the event’s exhibition furniture with lighting. Adding bright accents of cyan to the showcases, which were kept in a deliberately minimalist style, provided the perfect complement to the event’s corporate design. The thin and flexible fibres of the M-Fibre system were easy to integrate in the vertical struts of the exhibition furniture. The colourful accents of light provided an aesthetic detail while subtly drawing attention to the conference furniture and the exhibits shown in the cabinets. The benefits of customising furniture or other products with the help of cutting-edge RGB LEDs are two-fold: on the one hand, a wide range of different product versions can be implemented and, on the other, the light can be adjusted to fit the specific situation. One advantage is, for example, that colour and brightness can be adjusted separately. Hired event furniture or hotel equipment can be transformed into customised, eye-catching furnishings – in colours that match the respective corporate design. Situation-based product customisation through light is also an exciting design option in the context of the “sharing economy”, where products are shared simultaneously or used at different times by several users.

Functional value added
Light offers numerous customisation possibilities not only with regard to aesthetics and design. Intelligently implemented lighting solutions provide orientation and security, improve product usability and create functional and communicative value added. Product and industrial designer Martin Schmidt developed conceptual ideas for MENTOR to demonstrate the many ways in which M-Fibre can be used and highlight the communicative and emotional function of the line lighting. Luminous lines in safety pylons and lifebelts to improve visibility, line lighting with traffic light function for access control systems in public transport or lighting as an additional communication component for the hearing-impaired in devices like smoke alarms are only a few examples.

Versatile technical system
The compact and powerful LED modules of the M-Fibre system allow you to implement flexible lighting solutions that are optimally suited to the available installation space. Installable over a length of several metres and suitable even for tight radii, the M-Fibre system impresses with its premium light quality and homogenous illumination. With the current expansion of its standard range of LED modules, MENTOR has significantly broadened the system’s scope of application. Depending on the combination of fibre length and LED module, configurations for a variety of ambient light levels and installation spaces are possible: Night-time, twilight and daylight applications can be implemented just as easily as solutions for use in direct sunlight. If none of the standard lengths is suitable for your project, customised lengths can be provided as well. Partial activation of the fibres for increased efficiency or to prevent undesired scattered light is also possible, as is the modification of the LED modules, for example by choosing a different LED. In the context of more complex, customised development projects, multi-coloured applications, running lights or similar dynamic lighting scenarios can be realized as well.