- Post Publish: 2021-08-18
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How to select an industrial monitor? 11 concerns you need to pay attention to…
How to select an industrial monitor? 11 concerns you need to pay attention to… - Table of contents:
Weighing the advantages and disadvantages of characteristics and technical conditions is the first step in the selection process of the industrial monitor. Moreover, the application of displays used in industrial equipment is different from that of consumer-oriented products.
Basic factors such as optical properties, electrical properties, durability, and mechanical properties should be considered in the selection process of the industrial display.
Industrial Monitor Contrast
Unlike consumer displays, they are mainly used for direct viewing. For industrial LCD displays, users may not watch them at the best distance or under ideal lighting conditions. Therefore, a display with a higher contrast ratio is the best choice.
Perspective
Commercial and consumer displays are usually designed for single-use directly sitting in front of the display.
However, in most industrial applications, this kind of situation is very rare. For example, physicians or nurses cannot stop watching the LCD monitor directly during diagnosis and treatment. They just want to know the expected data.
For large machines, it is impossible to operate directly in front of the monitor. For the navigation of ships or airplanes, it is also inconvenient for drivers to sit directly in front of LCD, especially when there are multiple displays, they all face the viewers from different angles.
The industrial monitor should have a wide viewing angle, or be considered as “you can understand the displayed content at a glance”.
Color
In some industrial applications, special color information is more important than text or numbers, and it is very important to take the measured color as the percentage of NTSC color saturation.
In industrial LCD display, color saturation is completely dependent on the influence of backlight.
CCF (cold cathode screen) backlight is a very popular technology, and it can reach 70% and 80% of NTSC color saturation. In some applications, this range is still not wide enough, and sometimes it needs to be realized that the range is close to 100% of NTSC color saturation.
This full-color saturation is usually realized by led backlight in LCD products.
Brightness
Since most flat panel displays are used in the indoor environment, the brightness is about 250 ~ 300cd/(nits).
However, the use of this kind of brightness level display in an industrial environment cannot meet the requirements, because the ambient light will be stronger, and its brightness will easily exceed the brightness of LCD backlight.
Moreover, industrial touch screen displays are often used in industrial environments, which will also reduce the brightness of the display and make it look dark.
In common medical, industrial, and public telephone booths and other application places, the required brightness should reach at least 450cd.
Backlight life
Cold Cathode Fluorescent (CCF) lamp is the most commonly used backlight source in LCD.
In the field of industrial application, the lifetime of ccf backlight is at least 50000 hours per share, or the brightness decreases to half of the time compared with the new one. In many consumer applications, only 10,000 hours are required when the brightness of the backlight drops to half of its initial brightness.
Because consumer applications do not need continuous work of monitors, 10,000 hours of ccf backlight life is enough, but this is not the case in most industrial and medical application fields.
The life of the backlight is very low compared with that of LCD. People are trying to double the life span of backlights, but in most industrial applications, the minimum life span of 50000 hours is considered as the life span standard of ccf backlights.
Response time
In the past, passive display technology, including LCD, had a very poor response time compared with active light-emitting display technology.
In consumer displays, whether notebook displays or desktop displays, a response time of less than 30ms is enough.
However, in the fields of industry, medical treatment, and gambling, users can feel the movement in the dynamic content environment, which requires the industrial monitor to have a faster response time.
Among relatively new technologies, technologies such as AVS(advanced super view) or MVA(Multi-domain Vertical Alignment) have made the response time less than 10ms. In industrial LCD monitors using AVS technology, this index can reach 6ms.
Vibration damping
In many terminal products such as handheld devices (handheld data terminals) or portable devices (electric vibration generators), vibration tests are usually required, to ensure that the equipment can be used in commercial or emergency response vehicles.
In these applications, vibration damping is very important because it allows designers to leave a certain margin when designing the final product.
Mechanical properties
Like many technologies, design changes also exist in flat LCD monitors around the world.
In industrial monitor, such changes may occur every five years or more. Changes are caused by the need to adapt to technological progress or the emergence of better designs.
Therefore, it is very important to maintain a certain level of continuity when designing industrial and medical equipment, including the same installation holes, connector positions, even some same display sizes, etc.
When the industrial monitor changes within five years, the terminal product can have a longer life cycle.
Before choosing an industrial monitor, this helps to consider some standard specifications and the company’s design strategy.
In contrast, consumer displays can be changed every 6 months, which makes them difficult to be used in applications requiring configuration control.
Service life
For the consumers in the industrial market, whether they are used in the telephone booth or the display terminal on the oil drilling platform, it is very rare to find a monitor to ensure that they have worked for 5 years.
Manufacturers can provide industrial monitors with a life cycle of 5 years or more. However, most manufacturers of industrial-grade monitors will produce them for at least 3 years, while in fact, the supply time of products can last for at least 5 years.
In sharp contrast, consumer monitors used in desktop displays, laptops, or other consumer devices will change within one year, sometimes once every six months.
These displays attract consumers mainly by price or appearance, just like meteors: disappear in a flash.
However, they also have their own positions in the market. They are widely used in the consumption field. Products in this field do not have many requirements for continuous operation of displays and compatibility of external dimensions.
Configuration Control
Configuration control refers to the compatibility of the display in appearance/applicability/function within a certain period of time.
This basically allows industrial monitor manufacturers to flexibly change sub-components to keep up with the needs of technology or the market. Users are also allowed to transition to updated industrial monitor products with minimal design changes.
Product changes are inevitable. The problem is how fast and how much the product changes will affect users based on time and resources. When implementing configuration control, it is very useful to reduce the impact by managing changes.
The design of industrial-grade displays allows changes, while manufacturers strive to keep changes to a minimum.
When they have to change products, they not only have a sound and recognized engineering/product Change Notification (ecn/pcn) plan, but also the information will be sent to customers in a timely manner, to allow customers to adapt to changes without seriously affecting their business.
Usually, the manufacturer will issue PCN three months before the implementation of the change. These changes will then be filed, and when appropriate, customers can obtain samples of new products for testing before receiving new products.
In consumer displays, there is almost no demand for configuration control and it will not be accepted by the service market.
Most consumer monitors are basically sold for a short time and will not be notified in advance when changes occur.
Termination of Life
When the life span of a certain consumer display (EOL) ends, it is usually because the original user group of the display has disappeared or transferred to another product.
In many consumer products, it is very common that the service life of products is less than one year.
In contrast, for many industrial applications (such as gambling, telephone booths, and medical treatment), it usually takes 12 to 18 months from selecting a monitor to actually mass production of products.
As you can imagine, the risk of using consumer monitors on such occasions is simply disastrous.
However, some customers are very lucky that they can choose a kind of monitor from the consumer products that really exist for a long time, and can take advantage of their very large order quantity and fairly low price.
Industrial displays usually have a life cycle of 3 to 5 years. When the end of the product life (EOL) arrives, the notice will be sent to the customer and the reasons will be introduced, such as the shutdown of sub-components, major technical changes, or market demand.
The time is determined based on the last purchase time (ltb), ranging from 30 to 180 days, or the last delivery time (ltb), ranging from 3 to 6 months. This predictable EOL process allows OEM manufacturers to smoothly convert products to another industrial monitor product to reduce the impact on their business interruptions.
If the consumer monitor fails, the monitor will usually be scrapped whether during installation or at the worksite. Manufacturers will hardly carry out on-site or return to the factory for maintenance of the monitor.
This is acceptable in many applications because sending technicians to repair products is more expensive than scrapping monitors.
In the industrial market, according to the different service capabilities of products, OEM manufacturers are located at the back of products, and their maintenance time for terminal products can last for several years.
Whether replacing backlight components, inverters, or refurbishing displays, they are only part of the service for many OEM customers.
Suppliers providing industrial monitors usually design their products in a relatively flexible way.
For example, replaceable backlight parts or assembled displays can be easily disassembled into each sub-part. They also provide spare parts, usually including a backlight, inverter, and other sub-components.
However, the concept of providing spare parts in a commercial display environment is very rare.
