I'm seeking some out-of-production discrete through-hole component LED light bars for a project. There are two different styles that I want and can not substitute. According to a couple of archived internet postings, they were reportedly manufacturer-discontinued in either the late 1970s or early 1990s, but remained somewhat available until around 2000 because at least two distributors had bought the manufacturers' remaining stocks as surplus and sold them in retail packaging.
The first type have 2 LED emitters (a.k.a. chips, or dice) per unit. Their front face measures approximately 14 mm x 7 mm (9/16 x 1/4 inch) and they're about 12 mm (1/2 inch) tall excluding leads. They're made of lightly-tinted clear epoxy, with a white-ish diffusion layer about 1-2 mm (~1/16 inch) thick at the front. The dice are about 7 mm (1/4 inch) apart, center-to-center. These were once sold in retail packaging as Cal-Pak brand "Specialty LEDs", distributed by Cal West Supply, Inc. as their part numbers CP-59 (green), CP-58 (red) and CP-60 (yellow). I know that the Cal-Pak packages were stocked in MarVac Electronics stores in the Los Angeles, California vicinity, but I do not know where else they may have been found nor how widely distributed they were. They were also offered online via Cal West's website,
www.hallbar.com (defunct since early 2005). Additionally, I've been told that these LEDs have been found in "Lucky Bag" LED assortments sold primarily in Europe several years ago by Kemo Electronic. Kemo still sells such assortments but this type is apparently no longer included. I do not know the original manufacturers' part numbers nor which company(/ies) made them, though I have read a post mentioning that they were Japanese.
The second type is of similar general appearance and construction, but they have 3 emitters per unit. Their front face measures about 18 mm x 5 mm (11/16 inch x 3/16 inch) and they're about 9 mm (3/8 inch) tall excluding leads. The chips are about 5 mm (3/16 inch) apart, center-to-center. These were also sold in Cal-Pak packaging, at least in green (CP-57) and red (CP-56) colors, but apparently not in yellow. There are similar LEDs to these in current production, but not exactly alike -- the chip-to-chip spacing is 6 mm now, and the dimensions a bit smaller at 16 mm length and 8 mm height. Some time circa 2000, Cal West switched the LEDs in their Cal-Pak packaging to the current style without changing the part numbers. They also changed the 2-die style to a much smaller modern type of only 10 mm x 5 mm frontal dimension, again without changing the part numbers.
Photos linked below show the original large 2-chip style (slightly retouched image of actual LEDs in all 3 colors), the original 3-chip style (the green one is real and the others are simulated), and the Cal-Pak blister card packaging (partly simulated -- I don't know how many actually came on a card; it would most likely have been in the range of 1 to 4).
At the time of posting this, I believe I have fairly well exhausted the online possibilities presented by the popular search engines. I'm also running several daily eBay searches in English and German. So, unless you have access to data that isn't generally available to the public or crawled by the search bots, or is in another language, please don't waste your time running internet searches on my behalf. I'm after real-world info about a source or possible sources for these LEDs that probably /isn't/ already online.
I will consider your offers for any quantity. I am willing to pay international shipping costs. I'm in southern California, U.S.A.
http://www.electro-tech-online.com/a...-60-png.89802/
http://www.electro-tech-online.com/a...-xx-png.89803/
http://www.electro-tech-online.com/a...ted-png.89804/
Reply here or to a.j.franzman [ A T ] verizon [ D O T ] net. You can also view a duplicate of this posting at
http://www.electro-tech-online.com/t...t-bars.143227/ and reply there.