Story ID: 
Thommen Targets CRT-to-LCD Upgrade Market
By: Matt Thurber
Caption: Thommen is expanding its LCD manufacturing capabilities to deliver more LCDs for retrofit of aircraft with CRT-type displays.
Word Count: 233
Thommen Aircraft Equipment is expanding its capability to manufacture LCDs to replace older cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays installed in legacy aircraft. The company has provided this service previously but now is expanding CRT-to-LCD upgrades for the “broader market.”

Switzerland-based Thommen has its own in-house lamination and assembly capabilities, with manufacturing done in an ISO Class 5-certified cleanroom. “Modern LCDs can be tailor-cut to virtually any size of displays that are used in aircraft cockpits and mission systems,” the company explained. Thommen engineers can design LCDs with “custom bezels and specialized finishes designed to meet any customer’s unique specifications,” the company added. The upgrades include conversion and processing of analog information to “color and composite video signals to provide accurate navigation and mission data to the flight crew in a digital format” along with customized mounting systems, finishes, and bezels.

“There are a lot of good avionics systems out there that have old CRT displays on them and are becoming increasingly more costly and difficult to keep airworthy, simply because of the numerous obsolescence issues those CRT units are facing,” said Pete Ring, senior sales executive for North America. “Thommen has solutions available today to update and modernize most aging legacy CRT and older LCD displays, breathing new life into these venerable systems and airframes at a fraction of the cost of a brand-new full panel upgrade.”