14 DAY TRIAL // American Industrial Systems, Inc. (AIS) is one of those IT players that makes various products for other markets than the consumer segment, and it looks like its latest move consisted of stainless steel, among other things.
The new product line that AIS has created consists of three types of PCs, differentiated mainly by their screen sizes.
Simply put, the outfit created 15-inch, 17-inch and 19-inch panel PCs for manufacturing execution systems (MES) or supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) that pharmaceutical, chemical, beverage and food applications commonly end up using.
They all have an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz processor “combined with fanless design and high performance.”
Memory, storage and even the type of display are all customizable, depending on just how taxing the workload will be.
Communications will be possible via RS232, RS485 and Ethernet, while the fanless design not only reduces power consumption, but also a greater uptime, since there are fewer moving parts that could fail.
All in all, the newcomers have MTBF of 50,000 hours and are FCC/ CE (DoC) and RoHS certified.
In other words, they should have a high performance, easy programmability and long lifetime, all inside sealed, stainelss steel casings that defend against dust, water and chemicals.
As for software, Windows CE, Windows XP embedded, and Windows 7 embedded operating system are all available options.
Finally, the touchscreen itself is anti-corrosive and chemical resistant, so as to play well its role in such things as operator control and monitoring of food processing machines.
Embedded industrial controls and automation environments should all be able to benefit from the small form factor, the power efficiency and performance.
The newcomers are simply called Rugged Touch screen Panel PCs and have VESA mounting holes, meaning that they can be flush/panel mounted or set up on VESA stands.