Evonik Pleximid to help drivers use touchscreen functions

The Preh company has developed a touchscreen using Pleximid that is easier to operate thanks to haptic localisation aids, used in the four-zone air conditioning unit of the BMW 5 and 7 series.

Within just a few years, touchscreens have increasingly taken over from the multitude of knobs and buttons previously used to operate controls. That also applies to the automotive sector. The challenge involved is that drivers must be able to operate the various functions combined in the center console, such as air conditioning and the entertainment system, without taking their eyes off the road.

Hans Karl Heil, a development engineer for mechanical design at Preh, said: “With knobs and buttons, drivers can feel precisely where their hand is on the control unit. That is of course not possible with a touchscreen.”

The specialist in operating systems located in Bad Neustadt an der Saale has therefore devised concepts that make it easier for drivers to operate touchscreens.

Preh developed an entirely new generation of tactile surface contours for the air conditioning function of the centre stack operating system that the BMW Group offers as a special feature to purchasers of the BMW Series 5 and 7.

A polymethyl methacrylimide (PMMI) with a high heat deflection temperature from Evonik is also used, for example, for light guides in the daytime running light of modern LED headlamps. “Besides its good optical properties, the material also offers very accurate mold surface reproduction, making it ideal for three-dimensional forming,” Heil said. “And we can simply injection-mould the component, which is very important in view of the large number of units required by the automotive industry.”