ESMA is proud to present their first Application Paper dedicated to membrane touch switch technology. The paper is authored by industry veteran and an ex-Chairman of ESMA Board, David Parker.
The manufacturers and technology partners who make up the membership of ESMA, represent suppliers from the full spectrum of industrial printing; including screen, digital and pad printing. The diversity of applications that use these printing technologies is enormous and each application brings its own set of unique requirements. The ESMA Application Papers are designed to give suppliers, customers and potential new users an insight into some of the main applications and to showcase the capabilities that today’s speciality printing technologies can offer to add value to their product.
Membrane switch technology is still the process of choice for many demanding industrial or medical switch applications where reliability and simplicity are the primary requirements. In many industrial applica¬tions, only limited data input is required to operate the equipment, therefore an alternative switch technology, such as touch screen, does not offer any real benefits. In fact, a well-designed Membrane Switch will produce a ‘man machine interface’ that is much easier to use in a demanding industrial environment (i.e. exposure to aggressive chemicals, low lighting, operator wearing gloves) and will last a lot longer. Therefore rather than seeing Membrane Switches as ‘old technology’ they still provide the best solution for many applications and will be around for many years to come.
Full paper text is available on request via https://afip2019.org/mts
To learn more about the technology, visit the upcoming Advanced Functional & Industrial Printing conference (www.afip2019.org) which features 25 technical presentations incl. a keynote speech “Goodbye, membrane keyboard?” by Martin Gehrig from Hoffmann+Krippner.
ESMA welcomes your ideas and cooperation requests for the future application papers.
