Due to the nature of their business, primarily quarrying and rock crushing, dust, dirt and other airborne particles have always presented a threat to any electronics running at Vulcan Materials’ plants. Depending on the size of the plant, Vulcan needs between 1 to 6
rugged industrial computers to manage their automated processes. They had initially purchased Stealth computers, but had consistent issues with hardware failure. The Stealth computers they used had standard platter hard drives and fans that quickly became saturated with soot, dust, and dirt. Some of their hard drives, motherboards, and power supplies failed within the first year after purchase.
Furthermore, warehouse space was limited, and the Stealth computers were bulky for their shelves because they needed large enclosures and cooling devices to withstand the high desert temperatures. The final straw was the lack of timely support. Because Stealth support was located in Canada, they would oftentimes be quoted several weeks for repairs or replacement computers. Vulcan materials needed something resilient enough to withstand the poor air quality and hot desert environments, but powerful enough to run their HMI software.