Electronics Weekly puts its questions to an industry figure: Mark Cambridge, managing director of touchscreen technology firm Zytronic

How many simultaneous contacts can your screens handle?

Multi-touch performance has been the dream for traditional touch technologies for years. Our 'Projected Capacitive Technology' (PCT), in a similar fashion to the other 4 recognised traditional technologies, can roughly identify multiple signals, if they are widely enough separated, but can't presently achieve similar identification with tight multi-touch resolution. It is therefore easier to concentrate first on the improvement of response speed, to allow for seamless, near simultaneous, contact.

How do you avoid parallax errors?

Parallax with touch systems is firstly a combination of substrate thickness; secondly, the distance between the sensor and the display and finally and most importantly, the aspect size of the GUI touch icon. As technology developers, reducing the first two to a minimum is the important design feature for us. We then can offer advice to the GUI designers to help them improve the software design for touch activation.

Do you find yourselves having to replace a lot of vandalised screens? 

No. Replacements for our highly ruggedised Zytouch sensors are minimal, mainly due to our 20 years plus experience in the design of vandal-resistant optical laminates for ATMs. Zytouch was always a vandal-resistant screen with interactive capabilities not the other way around. The strength in the design comes from our ability to offer a fully thermally tempered front glass, which has high mechanical and physical capabilities in its own right. Lamination with a supporting additional glass substrate provides further protection still.

What lifetimes do you offer now? / What is your goal for lifetimes?

Our PCT has been in the market for over 7 years, providing us with a vast array of real life data from numerous applications, which no bench test could truly represent. Our original design parameters are justified, in that in all normal working conditions, internal and external, the technology is durable enough to provide unlimited lifetime performance. In some instances however, that is not deemed a good feature as it reduces the level of the after sales replacement market.

You manufacture in the UK - is this sustainable?

Two things drive the necessity for our manufacturing sustainability in the UK; the first being the need to protect the underlying IPR in both the technology and manufacturing techniques. The second is our move to automated manufacturing processes, thus reducing the considerable labour burden that is the usual motivation for going overseas.

See www.zytronic.co.uk