A Concept Proposal of a New Generation Operator Panels

Sammanfattning: This project was done for the company Beijer Electronics Products AB and the task was given by the hardware development department of the company. The project was about developing a concept proposal for a new generation operator panels. This was done to inspire the product developers at Beijer Electronics with innovative ideas before the actual operator panel development. More in detail the objective of the project could be divided into three main parts: • Generating a concept proposal • Further development of the concept proposal • Making a basis for a future input unit prototype (a HID) for the generated proposal During the first part, 26 concept proposals were generated after research and brainstorming. The proposals were first evaluated by the project group and then presented to some representatives from Beijer Electronics. The representatives decided that the project group should further develop two of the concept proposals. During the further development, 3D CAD models were done. A third concept proposal was derived from one of the first two on the initiative of the project group. A CAD model of the new proposal was also done. Investigations were made on which materials and manufacturing methods could be used for the parts of the concept proposals. The competing materials and methods were evaluated and the best ones were presented in the report. The third part of the project consisted of making a basis for a future input unit prototype. In this part theory about capacitive touch sensing was researched and explained. Also guidelines on how to make PCB with a touch sensing application was researched and described.