Are you excited about using your brand new tablet? Before anything else, it’s important to make sure it’s intrinsically safe. What exactly are intrinsically safe tablets? They’re tablets that can be used in hazardous areas. At first, you’re going to think why would you need to bring a tablet in those areas? Yes, it may contain apps that can prove useful to the daily operations that happen in those hazardous areas. However, no matter how rugged a tablet case is, it can’t make it intrinsically safe.
For a tablet to be considered intrinsically safe, it must be made of intrinsically safe equipment that would satisfy certain criteria. After that, it also needs to be approved by safety officials as they need to put an Intrinsic Safety (IS) marking on it. Before tablets can even be considered intrinsically safe to be used in hazardous locations, the items must demonstrate the following:
- Inability to cause an explosion even with two faults in the product
This will be thoroughly tested. Hence, scientists will be trying a combination of different kinds of faults. This is definitely the most important since it’s for the safety of the user. The last thing you’d want is for the gadget to explode in your face. Believe it or not, that’s possible if it gets short-circuited. Even if you’re playing a fighting game on the table, that’s definitely not the cause for the explosion.
- Control over the energy level of circuits or components
Perhaps, the simplest way of determining whether you have intrinsically safe tablets. You just need to observe if it has complete control over the circuits. Of course, it would be a must to observe all the circuits one by one.
- Control over the temperature of circuits or components
You’ll need to open the tablet and find out if all the circuits are well-controlled. You must be careful though because one wrong move can damage the tablet. Besides, each component plays a vital role in making the tablet function properly.
- Passing a drop test and ingress protection test for liquid and solid
Out of all the conditions, this one is by far the longest. You can’t blame yourself if you get scared of the drop test but it’s also to determine whether the tablet is durable or not. After all, if it gets wet and it doesn’t malfunction, you can ensure it’s a product that will last a long time. For the solid part, you just need to prove that it’s dustproof which is not that hard to do.
Once the tablet satisfies all of the above conditions, you don’t need to cover it with a stainless steel casing because it can be deemed intrinsically safe even without it. Basically, the casing only protects the tablet but it doesn’t change the way the gadget is designed. However, it’s common for anybody to confuse intrinsically safe devices from explosion-proof cases. They may be similar but they’re very different terms.