A membrane switch or more precisely a membrane switch assembly is comprised of several flexible layers that make up a complete switch package. This assembly can have as few as one active area (key or button) to several dozen active areas. How many keys or buttons is only limited by the physical size of the finished application.
There are two main material substrates that can be used to make flexible circuits. The first is commonly referred to as Kapton – DuPont’s trade name for polyimide film. Because polyimide/Kapton can withstand very high temperatures, post processing of etched copper circuitry is possible. The second substrate is polyester film printed with silver conductive ink. Polyester is a very robust polymer, but not as heat resistant as Kapton. However polyester has other excellent properties that make it outstanding for many flexible circuits.
It’s no secret that durability is the appeal of adding a membrane switch to a product. They are built to last which is why they are still often chosen over the newer technologies. However, what people don’t realize (or forget) is that improper handling is the number one reason for switch failures. Here are 3 tips for proper handling!
Protecting your identity one swipe at a time!
This summer’s latest blockbuster movie? No, but EMV and PCI are definitely creating excitement for companies that uses credit card readers or support the industry.
Interview with Stephanie Ratliff - Xymox Screen Printing Supervisor
Briefly describe what the CST machine is and how it works.
CST is a high-end, direct-to-screen imaging technology that uses an LED light to expose the negative area of the stencil while leaving the positive areas unexposed. The positive area is the stencil or image we want to keep. Once the exposure process is complete then it goes through a rinse process which is using water to rinse the exposed or negative image out. After that, it goes through the air-drying process then blocking out where you don’t want inks transferring to the substrate but just only the image itself.
Have you ever walked across the carpet and got zapped by the next thing you touched? That is electrostatic discharge (ESD). A person walking across a carpeted floor can generate up to 25,000 volts (25kv), even walking across vinyl tiles can generate and store several thousand volts in your body. Now imagine the next thing you touch is your microwave touch keypad, the charge may be transferred to the switch, this discharge may cause damage to the components within the assembled circuit if it is unprotected.
Breakaway ink is another term for ink that is meant to be tamperproof for a security feature. Maybe you’ve seen it before on parking stickers, when you try to remove the sticker from your car and it leaves a bunch of little tiny VOID’s stuck to your window; the ink for the VOIDs broke away from the sticker leaving it unusable for the person trying to steal it.
Depending on the end use, this feature is important to consider incorporating into printed circuits; similar to the sticker, the part is constructed so that if some nefarious ne’er-do-well tries to take a circuit apart, the printed traces will be damaged enough to cause a break in the traces. The circuit can no longer be completed, making the part inoperable. This prevents tampering with the interface, and whatever it is driving.
Ever walk up to a screen and touch it thinking it is or should be a touch screen? Human to machine interfaces are everywhere now so it is not uncommon to expect that functionality on everything. Functional printing is what makes those interactions possible.
You’ve seen it before, holding your phone over a payment box, or touching your hotel room key up to the door to unlock it – this new, convenient, technology uses Near Field Communications (NFC) antennas. These antennas allow data/information to be transmitted wirelessly, requiring no mechanical manipulation or physical interaction.
Ever wonder how design engineers take your ideas for a product and poof, the size, the color, the circuitry, every detail is on point? It takes years of knowledge and experience but here's a little secret...they get some assistance from handy software programs! (SHOCKING, I know). Let me tell you a little bit about these helpers, the most commonly used by design engineers are Adobe Illustrator, SolidWorks and AutoCAD.