Screens, touch panels and overlays

The screen, the touch panel and the overlay are not made in the workshop: they are bought. What is done here is to find the right reference —original or compatible—, handle the purchase and deliver it tested, on its own or already fitted into the assembly.

There are two different routes to this.

Replacing what has broken

A unit with a cracked screen, a touch panel that no longer responds properly, a front panel worn out by use. The equipment is still good and what has failed is a part that can be replaced.

The hard part is almost never fitting it: it is finding the reference that matches, especially when the manufacturer no longer supplies it separately or the model is a few years old. That is where the work lies, and that is also where the compatible alternative comes from when the original has ceased to exist.

Equipping a build

The opposite case: something being built that needs a screen. Here the three parts have to match one another —the screen, the front panel that frames it and the case where it is all mounted— and when each one comes from a different place, the fit between them ends up being nobody's responsibility. Hence the usual problems: the cut-out that doesn't match the visible area, buttons misaligned with what is printed above them.

With or without an enclosure

• Supply only. You have the rest sorted and need the part that fits your equipment.
• The finished assembly. If the enclosure is also broken or simply doesn't exist, it is made here, designed around the particular screen it will carry: the cut-out comes from its real dimensions and not from an approximation.

What we need in order to quote

• If it is a replacement: the make and model of the equipment, and the part being replaced if you can remove it. Any references printed on the back are what helps most to identify it.
• If it is a new build: what size you need, whether it has a touch panel and what electronics it has to work with.
• How many units, and whether the idea is to repeat them later on.

Either way, one point of contact instead of three, and the parts checked before they arrive. And if the enclosure comes from here too, one party responsible for everything fitting together — which is exactly the part left ownerless when each item is ordered separately.