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| In This Issue |
| Capability Focus |
| Technology Focus |
| Innovative Solutions |
| Team of the Month |
| Standard Products Update |
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"As a rule, he or she who has the most information will have the greatest success in life"
Benjamin Disraeli
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Do you see problems or possibilities?
Reframe your thinking. See difficulties not as problems, but as possibilities. Consider the lesson you'll find in meeting each new challenge. |
HALT-HASS
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Making it, breaking it, and fixing it in house and before release not only cuts product failure by up to 90%, but saves you time and money.
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Do you approach your work as a job, a career, or as a calling?
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According to researchers at the Mayo clinic, the way you approach your work has a dramatic effect on your overall job satisfaction - and greater job satisfaction can reduce stress (and help you get ahead, too).
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"Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory. Be brave enough to live life creatively."
Alan Alda (1936-) American actor, screenwriter & director
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Did you know?
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Ford
Sunday June 21, 2009 featured more than 2,100 athletes from around the world competing for the 2009 Ford Ironman Triathlon World Championship. Francisco Pontano and Tyler Stewart took the Men's and Women's titles respectively.
Coeur d'Alene, one of seven Ironman locations, is a favorite among the athletes.
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"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
Walt Disney (1901-1966) Entrepreneur, movie producer and showman
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Follow us:
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Esterline Advanced Input Systems
600 W. Wilbur Ave.
Coeur d'Alene, ID 83815
Phone 208-765-8000
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 Volume I, Issue 1
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July 2009
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Company Corner: Jacqueline Ram Ph.D. - Vice President, New Business & Strategy
Welcome to our first quarterly Newsletter. This newsletter is designed to keep you connected to our technologies, our capabilities, and our people. We hope you enjoy it! - JR
Leveraging experienced companies with an abundance of knowledge capital in user interface technologies can be an efficient way to increase product development reliability and efficiency in a tough economy. In the areas of touch, sensing, and control technologies, design matters aesthetically but manufacturability remains a prime concern. Your product not only has to look good and work well, but it must be manufacturable with the greatest yields at the lowest cost.
Knowing the importance of both substance and style allows the designer or project manager to organize their project where the importance placed on the user interface is equal to the entire system. Customers benefit from experience and knowledge of the latest commercially-available technologies; the integrated solutions chosen for a particular environment ensure appropriate design for the application. A product development partner, who provides the benefits of seeing the end result of many successful projects developed annually, is a low-risk avenue to streamline the development process.
Utilize our vast engineering resources, exchange ideas, and learn more about user interface technologies via design workshops or technology seminars. Tap into the knowledge and resources of a company that can provide all of this and more....Esterline Advanced Input Systems, for your touch, sensing, and control technology needs!
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Capability Focus
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| Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT)and Highly Accelerated Stress Screening (HASS)
It is amazing how some products hold up in the real world. Used over and over again they validate their purchase price by providing reliable service over the test of time. It is very likely the quality and ruggedness that you see in certain products is a result of some manufacturers performing HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Testing) and HASS (Highly Accelerated Stress Screening). These processes differ in focus from each other but both are used to uncover problems through the means of time compression. In other words, HALT and HASS use much higher stimuli than would exist in the field with the result of forcing failures or revealing design flaws in the device in significantly less time. This allows a company to see how their design would hold up "over the years" without having to wait. Defects are uncovered in the space of hours and are observed with the purpose of making ongoing corrections. These defects are then monitored, classified according to their nature and corrected. Sample corrections include improvements to the assembly process, making mechanical revisions to the design to remove stress or inherent design flaws or revising components that are not performing according to their advertised potential.
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Technology Focus
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Capacitive Sense
 Many of us use capacitive technology everyday without knowing what it is called. Projected capacitive sensor technology is the key to making Apple's iTouch & iPhone touchscreen function as novel state of the art user controls.
Here is how it works:
The Apple iTouch & iPhone touch screens are transparent multi-layer arrays of electrodes (transparent conductive pads - patterned onto a laminated polyester sheet) that are positioned over the LCD display of the device. The touch screen has two patterned electrode layers that measure both the horizontal and vertical position respectively. The electrodes, present in each layer, act as sensors that 'project' an electric field above and through the touch screen stack-up. When the user's finger comes close to the electrode it interacts with the electrodes 'projected' electric field and this interaction is measured electrically as a change in capacitance between the electrode and the user's finger. The array of electrodes is simply scanned sequentially to see which individual electrodes, within the layers, are touched to determine the horizontal and vertical position.
The finger position information (X, Y coordinates) is then transmitted to the LCD screen below displaying the result of your request. Granted, there is a vast amount of software programming that goes along with this, but it all starts with the projected capacitive technology. Projected Capacitive devices also operate with material between the finger and the screen! Material examples include a medical glove, work glove, even a ski glove.
It is our touch that allows us to feel more connected to any device operation. If the operation is difficult or awkward, we progress until we find the right solution.
Advanced Input Systems is an integrator of a wide range of control technologies and provides capacitive control solutions. Contact us and take advantage of our thirty years of user interface design and manufacturing expertise! |
Innovative Solutions
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 Medical-Digital Radiography
Challenge: Develop a flush dual stage button system in bent steel tubes to include a safety circuit. To develop frame assembly with bent tubes that can move a >500 lb system but weigh near 15 lbs.
Technology: Display/Touch Screen assembly with dual stage elastomer switches.
Solution: Dual Elastomers switch with a membrane circuit that is thin enough to fit inside the tube and be used inside the plastic housing. Strategically lighten the interior frame and tube to decrease weight without losing strength or to allow unacceptable emissions.
Innovation: Switches and wire harness must fit inside tubes during assembly.
Contact us if your program requires a creative solution.
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| AIS Team of the Month |
Spectrophotometer Software Implementation
The Spectrophotometer computer is used by our Screenshop. It measures color across a visible spectrum and produces data describing the color of a given sample in terms of the three parameters in color space we print or mold. This is vital fo r quality control. Early this spring, we started having performance problems with the Spectrophotometer computer.
Brett Rayner and Larch McWatters from IT worked with Jeff Kitchener and Robert Burns to upgrade the software from Propalett Optivew Gold version 4 running on Windows 98 to IQC version 5 on Windows XP which is supported by both Microsoft and Xrite, manufacturers of the Propalett Software. The team worked together to take several old databases and convert them to the new version while consolidating the information and making sure it is now backed up on a regular schedule. Once complete, training was setup to make sure users of the Spectrophotometer were trained on the additional capabilities of the new software. A work instruction was edited to reflect the changes with the new software. Thanks for an excellent job guys! |
Standard Product Update
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Medigenic® Medical Keyboard
 Advanced Input Systems has been recognized as a 2009 Silver Medical Design Excellence Awards Winner for their Medigenic keyboard. The Medigenic features a flat design that can be quickly cleaned in place with hospital-grade disinfectants. Users can touch-type with excellent tactile key response to swiftly document care. The Medigenic also features an alert system that reminds users to clean the keyboard at regular intervals and provides backlit keys for use in low-light areas. Entries were evaluated on the bases of their design and engineering features, including innovated use of materials, user-related functions that improve delivery and change traditional medical attitudes or practices, features that provide enhanced benefits to patient, and the ability of the product development team to overcome design and engineering challenges so that the product meets its clinical objectives.
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Get the GRIZZLY XTREME!
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Advanced Input Systems operates a world-class, ISO 9001:2008 certified facility that incorporates a full service design to manufacture methodology for its customers. Specializing in custom control panels, input systems and application specific keyboard solutions, Advanced Input System's diverse customer base includes major medical, industrial, military and gaming industry OEM's worldwide.
If you would like more information about any of the solutions or capabilities featured in this Newsletter please contact us at (800) 444-5923 X 1383, ais-sales@esterline.com, Skype: ais.sales
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