New foldable flexible digital touchscreen display for construction plans. The Zephyr E-portfolio meets the essential criteria of being lightweight, rugged, foldable, daylight-readable and having very low power consumption.
It will greatly simplify the creation, dissemination and use of construction plans by multiple teams co-operating in real time across multiple locations and thus helping ensure that all are working with the latest document revision.
Plastic Logic, the flexible display technology company, has entered into a development partnership with PrintLess Plans to produce the Zephyr E-portfolio, a touch-sensitive display for plans for on-site use by the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry.
Plastic Logic and PrintLess Plans have worked together to develop a medium format flexible display for use on-and-off site by the AEC industry. PrintLess Plans selected Plastic Logic's display technology as the best suited to the application. A working prototype will be shown at GreenBuild International Conference and Expo, Philadelphia, November 20th - 22nd.
Previous attempts to replace hard copy plans on construction sites have largely failed due to the challenges of making a sufficiently large display which is robust, lightweight, low power and can be folded or rolled up.
Plastic Logic's electrophoretic display (EPD) meets these criteria. The technology is unbreakable, flexible, daylight-readable, lightweight and only uses power to update the image. The EPD offering combines Plastic Logic's unique flexible OTFT backplane with technology from E inkTM, the market leader for flexible EPD materials.
The project timescales have been aggressive, but commenting on this, Indro Mukerjee, CEO Plastic Logic stated: 'With our experience, fast prototyping and agile manufacturing capabilities, we are able to make such ideas become reality.' Indro added: 'Plastic Logic and PrintLess Plans are looking forward to demonstrating the future of the on-site plan display to the 30,000 attendees at GreenBuild.'
The global construction industry is forecast to grow by 70% from US$7.9trillion to US$15trillion by 2020 (Vertical Edge Ltd.) and traditional plan printing, document management and circulation accounts for up to 10% of the value of a construction project.
