You are here

Home » SOLUTIONS

Features/Benefits

Argon Rugged Touchscreen

Features:

For our display products that have a touch screen requirement, Argon employs a ruggedized Analog Resistive (AR) technology. The ruggedized touch screen utilizes a glass on glass design (which can incorporate a circular polarizer for improved contrast in the highest of bright environments). This design has been extensively used and provides several advantages over a non-ruggedized AR touch screens and other touch technologies.

Benefits:

An AR touch screen was selected many years ago as it supports the most compact design over other types of touchscreens and is a proven technology in military environments with few, if any, operational issues. In contrast to other touch screen technologies (where there are many fit for use applications for them as well) AR offers several advantages. 

For example, Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) is susceptible to registering hits from water drops or mud splash. Capacitive (such as that used on smart phones and commercial tablets) cannot be used with common military supplied gloves and Infrared types require a large increase in unit depth and may have compatibility issues with NVIS goggles.

A ruggedized AR touch screen minimizes the shortcomings of non ruggedized AR by reducing or eliminating the following issues:

  • Surface Scratching -The top layer of the TS is Glass, not a polymer material resisting scratching from all but the most extreme contact
  • Pillowing - The laminated glass ensures that the polymer material cannot "bubble up" as the glass restricts any movement
  • Delaminating or Brittleness with Temperature Change Over Time - The glass surface reduces the cracking of the polymer that occurs over time with the expansion and contraction of the polymer material
  • No Discoloration - With expansion and contraction of the polymer material and the inevitable scratching that occurs, dirt and oils embed into the unit giving discoloration. The glass surface prevents the introduction of these materials.
ASD70 with Rugged Touchscreen

Customization of our Standard Models

Feature:

The Argon business model is based on the development of standard models which are designed for the military market and then working with the customer to customize or tailor the unit to their exact application or installation requirements.

Benefit:

From our outset, Argon realized that there is no one size fits all in the military display and computing market. Most, if not all, of our requirements come from the need to update or add new capabilities for existing air/land/sea platforms. Of course there are many similar requirements across and within similar platforms, such as 19" rack mounting, strict requirements for power consumption, heat dissipation, imperviousness to small particles and liquids, and of course, all designed to meet or exceed the testing requirements to Mil Std 810 and 461.

Many other fine companies take these issues into consideration as well. However, many competitive designs have limitations on the changes that can be made to their models. By creating standard, but inflexible, designs, they can save (little) money and reduce their need for changes. But this is not what our customers expect. As volumes in this industry are not at commerical levels, it is not costly to incorporate flexible design and production concepts and our customers understand that such flexibility does come, from time to time, at a higher price and are willing to pay for it, if only it would be accomodated.

Argon's designs our units such that we can make many of the changes that our customers ask for with little or no impact to schedule or cost for delivering a standard model. Take for example, a feature of our display designs. Argon does not attach our connectors directly on the video boards as that would limit the type of connectors and their locations. By hand wiring the connectors, we can place them at just about any location the customer wants and the customer can select, at the time of order, the type of connector. In contrast, to change a fixed design requires engineering drawing changes, supplier changes, assembly drawing changes, increased assembly time, etc that all add time and cost, not only to the product development and delivery time, but to even gain the organizations approval to undertake this change for what is typically a low volume over an extended period of time.

 

Pages