Rugged Industrial Touch Panel PCs Deployed in Heavy Industry

With capabilities to enhance and transform manufacturing industry operations with industrial-grade computing, Things Embedded was recently approached by British Steel for replacing their mixed combination of computers, displays, and all-in-one touchscreen computers which were continuously failing in the field.

Who is British Steel?

British Steel, founded in 2016 and acquired by Jingye Group in 2020, is a long steel products business that employs over 3,200 employees offering a wide range of high-quality steel products, manufactured to international standards. The company with its in-depth industry knowledge ensures that its customers receive the best possible standard of product for their application and inherently supports the best of the USA industry.

British Steel Overview:

• Work within construction steel supplying a wide range of structural sections to the construction industry.
• Provide a wide range of high-performance rail products for the rail industry meeting standards.
• Design custom steel profiles for customers with it used in several applications around the world.
• Produce wire rod meeting the strict demands of the automotive, construction, engineering, and consumer goods markets.
• Manufacture a variety of semi-finished products to suit customers’ requirements for rolling into long, structural, or general engineering products.

Steel production itself is highly polluting. The production requires large inputs of coke (a sort of coal) which is extremely damaging to the environment and makes for a very dirty industrial manufacturing environment.

The PPC-Z213 rugged industrial touch panel PCs manufactured by Arestech and designed for harsh factory environments were proposed by Things Embedded. The fanless passively cooled design with IP66/IP69K protection guarantees that the rugged Panel PCs can withstand harsh industrial factory environments and benefit production with no downtime for maintenance.

These touch Panel PCs are also designed and manufactured with a toughened protective display meeting the IK07 standard. Housed within the rugged stainless-steel chassis the panel PC provides durability against not only the harsh manufacturing environment but also purposeful vandalism.

With downward-facing I/O utilising M12 circular locking connectors the rugged touch panel PCs are protected against ingress from all angles. Onboard serial is protocol selectable which gives flexibility with connected devices in the field. The computers also provide dual Ethernet so they could communicate with their internal network and proprietary network devices.

The 316-grade stainless steel panel PCs provides British Steel with a system that can have harsh chemical cleaners applied to assist with the washing down of systems. Being subject to such a dirty environment this is standard practice within the industrial facility to remove the pollutants.