Custom Glass Touch Screens

Touchscreens with a glass overlay are generally considered to be more durable than those with a plastic top layer. They also typically provide a better optical clarity and can support an oleophobic coating to repel oil.

Resistive touchscreens feature flexible sheets of conductive material laid atop a glass substrate. When finger or stylus pressure is applied to the surface it disrupts current in the corners and sensors digitize this change.

Transparency

Custom Glass Touch Screens add a durable and cost-effective user interface to your device. They allow you to control your system directly from the display without the use of a mouse or trackpad.

These touch screens can be a single or multi-touch sensor with an LCD or TFT LCD monitor. They can also include a touch controller, light control films, and EMI/RFI filters. These custom touches can be adapted to your particular application through the use of a custom ITO pattern and electronics.

A touchscreen can be constructed from glass or plastic substrates. Glass substrates provide rigidity and are suitable for a variety of environments. Chemically strengthened and heat tempered glass is available for increased strength. Plastic substrates tolerate high impacts and are more flexible than standard glass. These can be used in hand-held devices and rugged industrial applications.

Resistive Touch

This is the most commonly used type of touch screen. It consists of a glass panel and a Custom Glass Touch Screen film screen covered with two layers of transparent ITO. When a finger makes contact with the screen, the layers separate and create a current flow. This change in voltage is detected by the touch screen’s IC chip.

Projected Capacitive (P-Cap) is a more advanced touch technology that uses transparent electrode films embedded in the glass and a dedicated IC chip to detect the points of contact. These sensors are activated by a bare finger, thin cotton gloves, or soft-tip stylus and can support multi-touch activation.

Strength

The touch sensor’s glass is chemically strengthened or heat tempered to add strength and durability. These enhancements also improve the sensor’s impact resistance, allowing it to resist damage caused by dropping a heavy metal object onto the screen. The glass does not splinter or produce sharp fragments that could increase the risk of injury to the user.

A Glass-Film-Glass (GFG) touch panel is a multi-touch surface that can be actuated by bare fingers, gloved hand, or soft-tip stylus and can be paired with a variety of overlays and display technologies including LCD, LCD-TFT, and OLED. This allows you to choose the best combination of features for your project.

AIS touchscreens are designed to be seamlessly integrated into your product design. They incorporate best-in-class characterization and optimization processes to align functionality with your product’s performance goals.

Resistive touch screens are built using two conductive glass substrates, separated by a narrow gap. When the user touches the screen, the metallic layers make contact and cause a change in electrical flow. The point of contact is identified by the sensor and transmitted to the system controller.

Elo offers a range of resistive touch screen solutions including AccuTouch 5-wire resistive, IntelliTouch surface acoustic wave and TouchPro projected capacitive. Each solution includes the touchscreen, touch screen controller and driver for the host operating system reducing your development time and integration costs.

Durability

When you incorporate a touchscreen into your product, you need to be sure it can hold up against rough use and harsh environments. This includes exposure to dust, water and chemicals. A durable touch screen can be made with glass or plastic, depending on your design requirements. A glass screen offers improved durability because of its transparency and strength. It is also scratch-resistant and can withstand a three-point bending test.

Capacitive touch screens are made of transparent electrode films and a semiconductor chip, which creates an electrostatic field that can detect the presence of a finger. When a user touches the screen, the electric currents within this field change ratios, triggering the sensor to register the input. The technology behind this type of screen allows for multi-touch activation and is compatible with bare fingers, gloves or styluses.

Before capacitive touchscreens were available, resistive touch screens used a soft, semi-flexible layer on top of the display and a gap or space layer that separated them. When pressure was applied, it closed the circuit and triggered the touchscreen to respond to touch inputs. Resistive touchscreens are prone to dents and scratches, so they are less suitable for rugged and unstable environments.

Glass is more durable than plastic, so many touchscreens with a display include cover glass as an added layer of protection. This layer also offers better optical clarity than those with a plastic top layer, and it is often coated with an oleophobic finish that makes the touchscreen easy to clean and resistant to fingerprints.

Aesthetics

Touchscreens need to look great as well as function flawlessly. RSP’s high-quality touchscreen panels are precision engineered to react to the lightest human touch, and each is custom designed for each customer. The manufacturing process creates proper spacing, resulting in superior sensitivity. In addition, touch sensors are coated with an anti-reflective treatment to optimise screen reading and viewing in strong ambient lighting environments.

In capacitive touch screens, clear conductive grids connect to electronics that detect the drop in voltage caused by outside contact. These layers are sandwiched by a protective cover glass that is typically standard or tempered Custom Glass Touch Screen glass or chemically-strengthened. This design ensures that any surface damage to the glass cannot penetrate to the electrode layer and impact functionality.

Zytronic takes this flexibility to the next level, offering full sheets of projected capacitive glass in a variety of sizes and shapes. They can also print borders and logos on the backside of the glass, bend the glass for curved designs or thermally toughen it to meet safety standards.

In industrial applications, a fully-screen PCT solution eliminates surface mount components and bezels that detract from the aesthetics of the device and can collect dust or debris. By integrating the sensor directly into the product’s cover glass, industrial designers can enhance their industrial products with sleek, elegant, and sophisticated touchscreen controls.