Turn on the Power of Anders Coverlens Customisation

The coverlens is the most immediately visible part of your user interface. From the very first glance, it sends a powerful message about the associated product or services. It has to be so much more than merely functional: it must convey brand values; it must invite interaction, and it must be reliable, clean, and retain its appearance over time, whatever the operating environment throws at it – which could be anything from rain or seawater to bleaching sunlight, cleaning chemicals, industrial oils, kitchen grease, or household dust.

While some of our customers come to us with a clear vision for their coverlens design, many others need help to understand all the options that are available and how to make the best use of them. To provide that support, it’s our responsibility - as a specialist in user-interface development - to keep up to speed with the latest design trends and manufacturing processes. To do this, we stay active within the displays community and we communicate with our manufacturing and supply partners to hear about their current capabilities and the new innovations and techniques they are developing for the future.

Control over manufacturing processes continues to improve, delivering greater accuracy and finer surface finishes, which ultimately enables options such as laser cutting of regular or irregular shapes.

We can cater for bespoke shapes to match the contours of an enclosure design as well as cut-outs in the coverglass for cameras, sensors and mechanical dials and buttons. If you want to have printing or touch features outside of the display area, oversized coverglass can be created to enable additional functionality.

• Any coverlens shape can be achieved to match the enclosure
• Cut outs for peripheral devices
• Extended touch or printed area with oversized coverglass

Anything can be printed onto your cover glass, from a company logo to functional icons which can be permanently visible or hidden until lit for that extra wow factor.

• Brand identity with full colour logo printing
• Icons can be visible or hidden-until-lit
• Affordable solution with maximum impact

Clear windows of any shape can be lit by different coloured LEDs placed behind the coverlens and only switched on, revealing the icon, when the related feature is activated. For example a battery indicator light can be illuminated when power is low.

• Sleek and stylish appearance
• Uncluttered user interface - only icons in use are shown
• Different coloured LEDs can be used to differentiate features

When applied to a touch panel, it is possible to create engraved areas that correspond to touchable controls such as buttons, dials, or sliders. This enables adding a tactile dimension to the user experience and can also be employed to engrave a logo or brand name in the coverlens without any compromise to the strength of the glass.

Touch bumps are in principle the exact inverse of spot facing, where the active area is indicated by a raised bump.

• Gives a tactile feed to touch controls
• A good touch option for the visually impaired
• Etched logos without compromising the glass

Both these plastic materials have high clarity meaning they compare visually to glass, but have the benefit of being lighter weight and stronger.

This type of cover material is useful in environments where safety is critical such as food processing plants and in hand held devices due to their superior impact resistance and unlike glass cannot be shattered.

However, some plastic materials cannot be used with certain coatings such as anti-scratch or ODLC (Optical Diamond Like Coating).

• Lightweight alternative to glass
• Superior impact resistance with no shattering
• Transparency comparable to glass

Effectively giving a complete black effect and achieving a very stylish appearance for use in devices from high-end audio to home-appliances and smart-home devices.

• Display appears completely black when switched off
• Stylish, modern look and feel to any device
• Backlight power consumption can be optimised

By using mirrored glass, designers of home appliances, smart meters or control surfaces can provide an elegant display that gives a reflective surface when not in use, but a clear display experience when in operation.

Although this will give a high end look and feel to the device, it comes at a power budget compromise as the backlight would need to be tuned to ensure optimum clarity.

• Luxury look and feel to user interfaces
• Hidden until operated display
• Ideal for high end home appliance control panels

Extending the coverlens in any direction beyond the boundaries of the display modules enables different shapes to be created to integrate other aspects of the user interface - such as capacitive-touch electrodes - and create an overall unified appearance.

• Extend the coverglass for additional touch functionality
• Add peripherals such as RF sensors
• Extra space for logos and printing

The technique of chamfering the glass gives smooth rounded edges, taking the sharp angles off the glass.

Another benefit of this is the glass edge is less prone to chipping if the device is dropped, prolonging the life of the product. We can achieve a variety of different chamfer finishes.

• Sleek stylish finish to glass edges
• Smooth edges less likely to chip when dropped
• Different shape finishes available

This effect can be achieved using glass, polycarbonate or acrylic (PMMA).

The space between the display and coverlens is filled with optical-resin, with the touch being tuned so functionality is possible.

Popular applications include smart-home energy controls, marine controls and motorcycle clusters.

• A different dimension to your coverglass
• Touch functionality possible
• Glass or plastic coverlens options

Optical bonding is a process which dramatically reduces the internal reflections produced between the coverlens, sensor and display layers by filling the air gaps between those layers with clear adhesives. This makes a huge difference to screen readability and prevents condensation or fog on the display. With contrast ratio up to 4x higher, optical bonding helps reduce power consumption. When applied with a suitable mechanical enclosure, optical bonding can considerably increase the overall impact resistance to help the end-product achieve a desired IK rating. 

When combined with toughened or strengthened glass, optical bonding can help increase the vandal resistance of products such as security panels and ATM machines.

• Improved readability in sunlight or brightly lit environments
• Increased durability of the display
• Up to four times higher contrast ratio

ODLC coating is ideal for a variety of portable electronics equipment, consumer and industrial electronics, and costs considerably less than full toughened glass, achieving superior scratch resistance while maintaining outstanding optical clarity.

Ideal for applications where the display is subject to constant use, damage from extreme environments. For example, in a medical application, adding an oDLC coating allowed a touchscreen to achieve the required impact resistance, whilst maintaining compatibility with gloved hands.

• High hardness rating with resistance to wear
• Lightweight and cost saving alternative to strengthened glass
• Impressive optical transparency with a smooth finish

A lower cost solution than full optical bonding is the use of an Anti-Reflective (AR) film that can be applied to either the top or bottom of the coverglass. This AR film reduces the amount of light reflection created by bright conditions, particularly outdoor applications. Multiple layers of AR film can be applied to reduce the reflection further.

Anti-Glare (AG) is another cost-effective treatment applied to the coverglass to reduce glare caused by bright ambient lighting, such as overhead lights in a building.

Anti-Fingerprint (AF) surface coating has excellent oil and water resistant properties, commonly applied in conjunction with a touchscreen to reduce finger print marks left from display operation, particularly useful in food industries and retail applications.