Use Case: Interactive Classroom Digital Whiteboard

Project: Extra Large PCAP Touch Panel

Project Briefing: A major OEM manufacturer was looking to develop a flagship PCAP interactive educational aid at an aggressive price point to rapidly increase its market penetration.

Challenges: The project’s overall ambition in terms of producing a best-in-class PCAP XL format screen for the education market was a challenge in itself. The product size (65”) combined with the customer’s strict optical and mechanical quality requirements, support for 40 touch points, powered stylus and gestures; low levels of latency and high responsiveness, restrictions on FPC placement and tail numbers, etc. all posed technical and manufacturing difficulties.

Solution: Our engineering team worked over the course of several months to refine a variety of aspects, everything from their cover lens design to their bonding methodology to their enclosure design and mounting method in order to increase production yield and reduce their integration failure rate. Meanwhile our production engineering team worked to increase our own in-house controls and production fixtures to ensure we could meet the customer’s requirements.

Use Case: Medical device

Project: Capacitive switch with glass cover lens

Project Briefing: A medical device manufacturer wanted to upgrade from membrane switches to an easier to clean and sterilize control panel with high levels of chemical resistance.

Challenges: Medical devices require excellent performance stability and need to be easily readable in high levels of indoor lighting. These devices are often cleaned using a variety of fairly caustic chemicals.

Solution: Dignity designed an optically-bonded glass cover lens and capacitive sensor that would minimize glare and provide additional ruggedization and enhanced brightness. In addition, we worked with their engineering team to optimize the enclosure design to ensure sealability and ease of assembly.

Use Case: Large Kitchen Appliances

Project: Capacitive switch with integrated, modular IC

Project Briefing: A large kitchen appliance manufacturer discussed with us the need to upgrade their current range of kitchen and home appliances in order to keep up with current trends in appliance design transitioning towards touch control for mid and high-end products.

Challenges: The manufacturer did not have a deep electrical engineering team and were unable to handle the programming to support the implementation of touch across multiple product lines. They also wanted to standardize the IC and programming across as much of their line as possible.

Solution: Dignity provided them with a capacitive touch sensor with a modular IC attached directly, while also providing extensive programming and tuning support to allow them to bring the product to market. Due to the patented modular attachment method, the same model of IC can be used across a number of product lines, reducing lead time, inventory and other operational issues.

Use Case: Industrial Embedded Touch

Project: Rugged touch panel with enhanced EMC resistance

Project Briefing: Our customer required a rugged touch panel with exceptional strength, able to operate in a wide temperature range and operate reliably in an environment with heavy amounts of EMI.

Challenges: The touch panel needed to combine an extra thick cover lens with reliable touch performance, while factoring in the need to manage touch sensitivity to cope with EMI issues. Cost constraints were an issue, and most traditional EMC filters were not compatible with their budget.

Solution: Dignity’s engineering team walked through each aspect of the machine stack-up, including the current LCD selection, IC selection, air gap, mounting method, etc. in order to optimize EMC-resistance without requiring expensive EMC filters or meshes.

Use Case: Small Kitchen Appliances

Project: Touch panel with integrated touch controller for high-end food processor

Project Briefing: A European home appliance manufacturer came to us with a mature motor driven product that incorporated mechanical buttons which they were looking to upgrade to a touch screen interface in order to match their competitor’s product upgrades.

Challenges: The product was already tooled and in production, and the company wanted to minimize any new tooling and/or changes to mature electrical components – this meant a very small product envelope for incorporating the touch screen and minimal power consumption to avoid needing to upgrade the product’s power supply or motherboard, while also providing exceptional EMI-resistance as the unit’s wattage and horsepower were very high.

Solution: Dignity’s project team analyzed the provide product files, CAD drawings and the product’s assembly documentation and developed a touch screen display module with an integrated touch controller that would enable easy assembly while fitting within the defined power consumption and control panel envelope. In addition, Dignity provided feedback on the programming of the product UI to optimize their solution for the projected capacitive screen provided.

Through extensive knowledge of the home appliance design and manufacturing process, Dignity was able to provide an optimized touch solution within the touch, cost, size and power constraints of an existing product, significantly upgrading the aesthetic and function of the final product.

Use Case: Industrial Machinery

Project: Membrane Switch Panel w/ Ceramic & Metal Substrate

Project Briefing: An industrial machinery manufacturer required a membrane switch with an exceptionally rugged and heat resistant substrate; polymer films by themselves or backed with hard plastics just couldn’t cut it.

Challenges: The operating environment and the machinery’s own reliability demands were on the extreme end; polymers, glass and hard plastics simply were unable to hold up to the kind of abuse that the control panel would be tested for.

Solution: Dignity’s engineering team provided a combination metal and ceramic substrate membrane switch panel that retained excellent responsiveness and reliability, which the ruggedness of the material meant that it was incredibly resistant to any kind of chemical, temperature or physical abuse.

Use Case: Amusement Gaming System

Project: Touch display module w/ anti-vandal and custom LED backlight development

Project Briefing: A manufacturer in the field of electronic gaming was looking to increase the screen size of their touch display for use in a game cabinet.

Challenges: The product was sold for installation in bars and restaurants, so it needed to have excellent display ruggedization to resist damage or vandalism, but the display also needed to have high brightness and contrast for use in low-light conditions. To compound the difficulty, the customer wanted a plug and play solution that would function optimally with their other existing components and systems.

Solution: Dignity developed and performed extensive impact and strength testing on the extra-thick touch panel stack specified for the project; at the same time the sourcing and engineering team worked with an LED supplier to develop a backlight that could satisfy the need for exceptional display brightness and lifespan. The final solution was fully fit to plug into the customer’s product as is, without need to alter assembly procedures or other components.