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By ADMetro In
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Reduce Touch Screen Development Costs

Our world is full of touch screens: they’re in our pockets, in our bags, on our laptops, at the workplace. We sign for deliveries on touch screens, we design on them, we read on them, we even have them in our cars. Touch screens are one of the first places that system designers look when they want to cut down on costs, but there are smart ways to reduce development costs and ways that will negatively impact the performance of devices.

Electronic Design suggests several ways of reducing the development costs of touch screen technology, including using cheaper materials in the cover lens, using polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates instead of glass, and reducing the stack-up of sensors. Predictably, each of these savings methods come at a cost to quality and performance.

Using a cheaper cover lens will make the device more likely to crack and shatter, which can quickly become expensive if you’re using it in retail or signage applications. Anytime you’re developing an application that’s going to be used frequently, such as a PoS, or placed in a public environment, you need shatter-resistant glass.

The same goes for the substrate; all of A D Metro’s touch screens use glass substrates. We can also improve the glass thickness and our ULTRA resistive touch screen line includes spalling-resistant substrates, a popular option in mission critical applications that may experience impact. A glass substrate offers superior optical clarity over cheaper options.

Finally, reducing touch screen design from two layers of ITO (indium tin oxide) to one means your device will have lower accuracy and linearity, and in capacitive touch screens it reduces the number of finger points that can operate at once. For full multi-touch functionality, you can’t cut costs on the stack-up.

The problem with these cost-cutting measures is that they have a negative impact on the performance of the touch screen. At A D Metro, we wanted to find a way to reduce development costs and get to market sooner while maintaining our high-performance standards, in terms of durability, optical clarity, and sensitivity. We designed a common controller for our PCAP touch screen line that worked with a wide range of screen sizes. This patented group controller means that we spend less time and money designing controllers for a variety of touch screens, reducing the Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) costs that you pay, and reducing the amount of time it takes us to develop a screen for your solution. It’s a cost-effective, smart innovation that does not affect the quality of the final product.

A D Metro wants you to save money by offering lower development costs and get your devices on the shelf faster. We deliver top-quality touch screens to our partners and provide help through prototyping and design to make sure that our screens are properly mounted, preventing any errors from arising due to installation. You can reduce development costs without sacrificing the quality of your devices. Get in touch with us to find out how.

Ask the touch screen experts at A D Metro