Epec's Blog | Electronics Manufacturing Solutions

Dome switches are a very popular solution for use as a momentary switch. They are a good solution that provides tactile feedback that the switch has been depressed and an event registered. Many applications require a dome switch mounted to a flexible circuit board.

Touchscreens are everywhere. From the coffee maker in the breakroom to the smartwatch on your child’s wrist to the in-flight entertainment system on your commuter flight, touchscreen technologies are a part of our everyday lives. As touchscreens continue to become intertwined in our culture, they help make everyday tasks that much simpler and improve the ease of use for all kinds of electronics.

Our nation’s warfighters demand the highest reliability vehicles, weapons, and communication systems that exist. Lives depend on these products working the first time and every time. They rely on the quality and reliability of the electronics behind their state-of-the-art systems.

The last 18 months have been some of the most challenging that many of us have had to deal with both personally and professionally. It has often felt like we were riding waves, coming closer to things getting a little more normal, only to have them change radically. Looking forward to the next 18 months, I don’t see those changes getting any easier for us or our industry.

Specific to medical devices, handheld electronics, rack-mounted equipment, and other instrumentation utilize membrane switches as a low-cost and high-reliability solution for keypad and button technologies. There are countless button and switch options available for the plethora of design requirements that exist. Medical professionals use these buttons as the primary way to interface and operate the device.

There are many forms of Night Vision Imaging Systems (NVIS) that help our nation’s warfighters, pilots, and other professionals. Known as Night Vision Goggles (NVG), these devices are highly specialized and amplify various wavelengths of light allowing the user to “see” in darkness.

It is not often we build an electronic device without any sort of prototyping, but it can happen given the nature of the project and the deadlines being met. If a customer needs a Human-Machine Interface (HMI) to hit the floor in 2 months, the time to develop and build a prototype is strained as both the customer and design engineers will want to test it and provide feedback.

Front panels, bezels, and other types of human to machine interface equipment use several circuit technologies to operate. These circuit types usually involve some form of printed or etched traces using conductive materials like copper and conductive ink. These custom layouts are routed across insulating sheets and films, eventually becoming circuit boards and flex circuits. Dome switches, LEDs, and touchscreens can be added to these everyday circuit boards, bringing them to life as a high-technology HMI solution.

The use of capacitive touch switch technology is widespread and becoming more frequent each day. Capacitive touch switches are common on thousands of everyday devices including gas station pumps, smartphones, lamps, automobile dashboards, and even the smart speaker in your home.

The use of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) in user interface assemblies is widespread across nearly all industries, locations, and operating environments. Over the last 20 years, the cost of LCD displays has significantly dropped, allowing for this technology to be incorporated into many of the everyday devices we rely on.