The cost of industrial touchscreen monitors can be reduced by choosing only the necessary specifications and materials without lowering the quality. For industrial touchscreen monitor frames, two types of housing materials are used: plastic frames and aluminum frames. Nowadays, 80% of the market uses plastic frames to reduce the cost of industrial monitors. Using A- or B-grade LCD panels, 1.1 mm–1.8 mm tempered glass thickness, 2–3H glass strength, and plastic instead of glass reduces costs. In this article, we will discuss more points in detail.
How Housing Material and LCD panels affect monitor cost
Enclosure Material
Normally, two types of material are used, plastic and aluminum. Plastic Enclosure is less expensive than metal housing but it only works well in normal room temperature and can’t be used for many industrial applications. The right Enclosure material helps to reduce the overall cost of an industrial touchscreen monitor.
In Plastic, two types of plastic material are used: the first one is flammable plastic ( non-UL94 or UL94-HB ), and the second one is non-flammable (UL94-V0 rated). Non-flammable plastic is recommended for designing the housing of industrial monitors because it resists ignition and flame spread.
LCD Panel Selection
The price of an industrial touch screen monitor is heavily dependent on the LCD panel. In the market, three grades of LCD panels are used: A , T, and Q Grade. A grade LCD panels are the most expensive because these panels do not have any black spots. For cost reduction, T or Q grade LCD panels are used. T or Q grade LCD panels may have a few black spots from sizes of 0.5mm to 5mm which can be ignored, and can be acceptable in some applications.
Brand-new LG, AUO, or BOE are more expensive, while locally assembled lcd panel in Chinese factories or 70% refurbished LCD panels are used to reduce the cost of touch screen monitors. Refurbished LCD panels with new backlight lifetime is almost equal to new one but cost is almost 30% less compared to new lcd panel.