Automotive Capacitive Touch Solutions
It’s fair to say touch enabled devices play a huge part in our lives, and this now extends to the automotive industry. Most, if not all, new models now come with a touch enabled navigation / audio panel of some description.
Technological advances are taking this further, with touch registering steering wheels in test production and car door handles starting to become readily available.
Diamond Coatings Automotive Capacitive Touch Solutions
Diamond Coatings, based in phoenix, Arizona are market leaders in ITO (Indium Tin oxide) coatings supplying to a truly global customer base. ITO is a transparent electrically conductive material that can be deposited onto plastics and glass and is used to produce a number of different kinds of touch enabled devices.
By depositing a thin film of ITO on a glass screen, the glass can register a human touch in its exact location as well as the gesture being made. This is achieved by a finger being conductive, which alters the charge running across the screen.
This principle is used in automobile touch panels routinely as well as in so many other industry’s and environments – How’s that cell phone going? Could you live without the touchscreen? I wonder how that touch enabled screen is achieved… (yep, most likely using ITO coated glass!)
Another product which we designed and developed was a capacitive touch overhead light system for cars. This works in the same way as the touchscreens mentioned above but offers the user a more efficient way to operate interior lighting within the car.
This obviously has some great benefits – aesthetically superior due to a lack of knobs, switches or buttons, the smooth sleek lines that car designers carve (crave?) for can be achieved. There is also a really good safety aspect too – a driver is not having to feel and fiddle around for said knobs and buttons – the lighting is controlled with touch, anywhere on the lighting fixture.
To date, we have supplied in excess of 8 million lenses for automotive overhead lighting consoles to luxury car manufacturers.
Although not capacitive touch related, it is worth noting that we are also able to add anti reflective and hard coat coatings to glass, plastics and thin PET films. The hard coat polycarbonates are a superior choice when it comes to light enclosures on car exteriors.
Our PET films can also have a thin layer of Indium Tin Oxide deposited onto the surface. When these films are applied to glass, the glass can be heated by running a small charge across the ITO. These films, and indeed our ITO coated glass solutions, are now being utilised in luxury car manufacture.
We are hoping that you might start to look around you at everyday objects and wonder if there is any element of ITO involved – the uses are numerous and now quite common.
Automotive Capacitive Touch Solutions
How can we help? If you have a specific requirement based on anything listed above, we would love to hear from you. Our technical team will be able to run through the best solutions to ensure your project is a success, get in touch today.