One of the main reasons industrial computer enclosures or factory LCD enclosures are used is to protect against dust. Dust is not just a pain for housewives doing the spring cleaning; dust can have all sorts of adverse effects.
Breathing in dust can be extremely dangerous, even innocuous substances can bad not just for your health but also for any equipment used in dusty areas.
The difficulty in dealing with dust is that it can be made from literally anything. A lot of household dust, for instance, contains skin cells. However, in factory conditions dust is generated by all sorts of processes so can contain everything from metallic elements to chemical, water and food products.
The effects dust has on can depend entirely on what elements constitute it. At best dust will act as an insulator, blocking filters and causing equipment to overheat. It can also penetrate an electrical device and block up any moving parts such as hard drives on a PC. Worse still, if the constitution of the dust is conductive (such as metals) it will short circuit an electrical device and even start fires.
Some dust can even be explosive too, particularly metallic elements or even food stuffs such as sugar, coffee powder and even custard. These organic compounds can form dust clouds that will ignite and explode from a spark (like those being generated inside most electrical appliances.
Protection against dust can quite easily be achieved by a dustproof computer enclosure, printer enclosures and LCD enclosures can all be designed to prevent any dust from penetrating allowing the use of computers, printers and digital signage in dusty environments.
Some industrial computer enclosures and LCD enclosures are also ATEX compliant. ATEX is the European guideline that denotes protection against explosive environments. An ATEX approved industrial computer enclosure will protect the outside environment from sparks generated by any device that could trigger an explosion.
