Hey im new to this forum and i have been looking into the idea of building my own multi touch setup and have been really interested in going down the FTIR Path but i dont have a projector and they are quite expensive for a student saving up for next years tuition so the LCD FTIR method has really got my eye. My question is in the search for a compliant surface for this LCD FTIR setup has anyone tried taking gloves and dipping the tips into a silicon solution and then once dried the gloves could be used to control the surface with out having to find a material to put directly on the screen.

Cool idea, sounds like it would work, though most people shy away from having to use gloves.

I’m not certain about this but if you use gloves with silicone on them, it seems like you will have a high amount of friction between your fingers and the acrylic which means you may not be able to drag your fingers easily.  This might also cause the silicon to rub off.  Using cheap rubber gloves might negate the need to dip them into silicone but also may cause high friction unless some type of lubricant was used and lubricating is probably undesirable because of the mess that may occur.  There may be some other material that has the coupling effect that can generate bright blobs while still having low friction though.

I do agree that people dont want to where gloves to use a multi touch screen but for the time being until there is a magic complaint surface we will have to make due with small steps. and in response to oaa8 i agree that there may be to much friction between the silicon and glass to operate a MT table with ease there are a couple of thing that i want to try once i have built my prototype.

1. regular silicon tipped gloves
2. Tinkman mans solution on the tips of gloves
3. ESD safety gloves (the ones used in the waterloo RIM (blackberry) manufacturing plant) these have a nice rubberish tipped fingers
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i know this because i work in the office at RIM and work"ed" in the plant. but im sure these kind of gloves can be found from online vendors. i will come back with a brand name in the next few days.

The gloves that are used in my plant are Polyurethane coated gloves. made by P. U. Glove (M) Camery. Co., Ltd. once i have my prototype up and running (hopefully next month) i will comment on using these gloves unless some else beats me to it or some genius finds a compliant surface for LCD FTIR multi touch.