You interact with a touch screen monitor constantly throughout your daily life. You will see them in cell phones, ATM’s, kiosks, ticket vending machines, manufacturing plants and more. All of these use touch panels to enable the user to interact with a computer or device without the use of a keyboard or mouse. But did you know there are several uniquely different types of Touch Screens? The five most common types of touch screen are: 5-Wire Resistive, Surface Capacitive touch, Projected Capacitive (P-Cap), SAW (Surface Acoustic Wave), and IR (Infrared).
We are often asked “How does a touch screen monitor work?” A touch screen basically replaces the functionality of a keyboard and mouse. Below is a basic description of 5 types of touch screen monitor technology.
The advantages and disadvantages of type of touch screen will help you decide which type touchscreen is most appropriate for your needs:
5-Wire Resistive Touch is the most widely touch technology in use today. A resistive touch screen monitor is composed of a glass panel and a film screen, each covered with a thin metallic layer, separated by a narrow gap. For instance, when a user touches the screen, the two metallic layers make contact, resulting in electrical flow. The point of contact is detected by this change in voltage.
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Surface Capacitive touch screen is the second most popular type of touch screens on the market. In a surface capacitive touch screen monitor, a transparent electrode layer is placed on top of a glass panel. This is then covered by a protective cover. When an exposed finger touches the monitor screen, it reacts to the static electrical capacity of the human body. Consequently, some of the electrical charge transfers from the screen to the user. This decrease in capacitance is detected by sensors located at the four corners of the screen, allowing the controller to determine the touch point. Surface capacitive touch screens can only be activated by the touch of human skin or a stylus holding an electrical charge.
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Projected Capacitive (P-Cap) is similar to Surface Capacitive, but it offers two primary advantages. First, in addition to a bare finger, it can also be activated with surgical gloves or thin cotton gloves. Secondly, P-Cap enables multi-touch activation (simultaneous input from two or more fingers). A projected capacitive touch screen is composed of a sheet of glass with embedded transparent electrode films and an IC chip. This creates a three dimensional electrostatic field. Therefore, when a finger comes into contact with the screen, the ratios of the electrical currents change and the computer is able to detect the touch points. All our P-Cap touch screens feature a Zero-Bezel enclosure.
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SAW (Surface Acoustic Wave) touch screen monitors utilize a series of piezoelectric transducers and receivers. These are positioned along the sides of the monitor’s glass plate to create an invisible grid of ultrasonic waves on the surface. When the panel is touched, a portion of the wave is absorbed. This allows the receiving transducer to locate the touch point and send this data to the computer. SAW monitors can be activated by a finger, gloved hand, or soft-tip stylus. SAW monitors offer easy use and high visibility.
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IR (Infrared) type touch screen monitors do not overlay the display with an additional screen or screen sandwich. Instead, infrared monitors use IR emitters and receivers to create an invisible grid of light beams across the screen. This ensures the best possible image quality. When an object interrupts the invisible infrared light beam, the sensors are able to locate the touch point. The X and Y coordinates are then sent to the controller.
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We hope you found these touch screen basics useful. TRU-Vu provides industrial touch screen monitors in a wide range of sizes and configurations. This includes UL60601-1 Medical touch screens, Sunlight Readable touch screens, Open Frame touch screens, Waterproof touch screens and many custom touch screen designs. You can learn more by viewing TRU-Vu Touchscreens or call us at 847-259-2344. To address safety and hygiene concerns, see our article on “Touch Screen Cleaning and Disinfecting“.
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Most of the time people don’t know the difference between a touchscreen and a LCD screen. When there are dark black blobs on your screen, it’s not because the display screen is damaged, it is the caused due to the damage in the LCD of your mobile phone whereas when there are cracks on your screen its mainly due to the damaged caused to your touchscreen and as compared to an LCD screen it is easier to fix as you only need to replace the display screen of you mobile phone.
An LCD is the part of a phone that displays the image we see on screen. It is the layer which produces and displays the image, therefore if the LCD is damaged you can still use the touchscreen although the panel would have either the aforementioned dark black blobs or the spider web type dark cracks on the display or both it would still function normally. To repair the LCD, a technician would have to pull apart the phone part by part to reach the LCD and assess the damage done which is not required for a touch screen. LCD, which is a liquid crystal display, is widely used in mobile phones as it uses low power and produces good quality images.
The images which are displayed in a LCD are produced through small elements which are called pixels. Pixel is a word everybody is familiar with but what exactly is a pixel? Pixel is made up of a layer of molecules lined up between two transparent electrodes and polarizing filters. There are several types of LCDs, reflective, transmissive and transflective, each has a specific function. A transmissive LCD can produce a clear and good quality image in low light while Reflective screen can produce a very good image in bright light. The transflective screen as the name indicates can produce a good quality image in both conditions, hence it is a mixture of both transmissive and reflective LCD.
Touchscreen is now a part of almost every digital gadget in the 21st century. From mobile phones and laptops to TVs and switch boards, it is now used almost everywhere your eyes fall on. But what exactly is a touchscreen? A touchscreen is basically a device which allows us to directly interact by using our fingers or a stylus. The stylus is a special kind of pen whose tip is covered with a unique coating which allows it to directly interact with the computer. We can use one finger or multiple gestures to interact with a touchscreen device. It doesn’t require a mouse or any alternative device such as a keyboard for navigation. A touchscreen can use several methods to sense our finger, it can use a grid which consists of infrared beams or it can use touch sensitive units to sense our gestures.
With touchscreen, there are several gestures that we can make which would be quite tiresome if we use a mouse or a keyboard like when we double tap the screen while using gallery or while reading a pdf file the screen tends to zoom in and when we double tap again it zooms out similarly we can easily drag different icons and swipe to scroll upwards, downwards even sideways. A touch screen is also referred to as an input device as it takes input directly from the user. The computers require a mouse which makes them hard to use but touchscreen is very simple to use as you are directly interacting with the icons, it is also cost efficient to manufacture touchscreen as it does not require buttons for each icon.
In conclusion it can be said that LCD and Touch Screen have very different functions which makes them different from each other. One deals with production of images and the other deals with receiving the input from the user directly. Although they are different, they are equally important for a digital device.