Projected Capacitive Touch Screen Heads New Industrial Market

In recent years, with the popularity of smart phones and tablet terminals, consumers have widely recognized the interactive mode of using fingers and devices for intuitive operation. Today, industrial devices have also adopted this intuitive mode of interaction. However, due to the special requirements of industrial applications and consumer applications, such as the need for higher reliability and a wider range of temperature, touch-screen LCDs are currently not used in industrial applications.

Specifically, industrial applications and consumer applications have the following differences:

First, industrial display screens are mostly used in outdoor and other harsh environments, and consumer screens are basically used indoors;

Second, the service life of industrial display screens is about 10 years, and consumer screens only need three or four years of service life.

Third, the working hours of industrial display screens will generally be 24 hours a day, while consumer display screens will generally only work within 12 hours.

Fourth, the brightness of the industrial display screen needs 600~1,500cd/cm2, and the consumption display screen is only about 300cd/cm2;

Fifth, the backlight time for industrial displays generally needs 100,000 hours, and the backlight time for consumer displays only needs 3 to 50,000 hours;

Sixth, in terms of temperature range, industrial display operating temperature environment can be from minus 30 degrees to 80 degrees above zero, while consumer display operating temperature environment is generally 0 degrees to 50 degrees.

In addition, in terms of market size, the market size of industrial display screens is less than 1% of the size of consumer display screens. The current market size of consumer display screens is 100 billion US dollars, and the market size for industrial use is also $1.2 billion. However, with the increasing demand for touch screen technology in medium- and low-volume markets such as handheld devices, monitors, displays, and other interactive applications, especially in medical and industrial fields, industrial LCD modules with touch screen technology are Gradually warmer.

At a recent media conference held by Mitsubishi Electric, Mitsubishi Electric's LCD Division Chief Mr. Hideki Kurada said, “Although projected capacitive touch screens have been widely used in iPhones and iPads, they are not widely used in industrial applications. In response to market demand, Mitsubishi Electric has introduced a liquid crystal module equipped with a projected capacitive touch screen for industrial applications, which offers high visibility, high durability, and its unique detection and control processing technology. For 2.8mm protective glass, it can be operated with gloves, and it can be detected even if the touch screen is attached with water droplets.” He also pointed out, “Our projected capacitive touchscreen LCD module has a liquid crystal body in the middle and a protective layer on the top. The following is a control circuit. We integrate these three parts to reduce the failure rate and interference. The other general products are separated and the parts may interfere with each other."

When it comes to Mitsubishi's future product development strategy, Hideki Tsizumi stated that Mitsubishi Electric focuses on developing two types of products, one that emphasizes high-tech products that are used outdoors and on medical equipment; the other is emphasizing cost-effectiveness, use in ATMs and Standard products on POS machines. He is very optimistic about the application of projected capacitive touch screen in the industrial field, because the application of such products is very wide, can be used in industrial automation, gas station terminator, aircraft display, automotive GPS, medical equipment, bank POS machines and ATM machines , industrial measuring instruments and high-speed rails, etc.; coupled with Mitsubishi is trying to reduce the cost of projected capacitive touch screens, making it more cost-effective; and because the touch screen's intuitive interactive mode can shorten staff training time and reduce software The open cost. Therefore, the future of projected capacitive touch screens in the industrial field is still very optimistic.