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tech tips viewers we are coming to you live from japan

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not live live in fact by the time you're watching this i'll not only have come

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back from japan but also traveled somewhere else and probably be back from

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there too so not live but definitely

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from japan i can prove it look that's japan and we're wearing these robes so clearly

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we're not lying and today we did something pretty exciting courtesy of

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logitech we got to tour the omron factory

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right here in japan where they make the

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roamer g switches in logitech's g910

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orion spark keyboard and it was

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actually a lot more interesting than i thought it would be it was kind of

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awesome stay tuned

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so the tour kind of began in the lobby and what i didn't actually know when we

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showed up was that omron actually makes a ton of different types of switches so

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automotive factory automation and then kind of what we're mainly interested the

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more consumer side of things i thought they just made like mouse switches and

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and not even then they have a whole bunch of different categories for the types of switches that they have with

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these little delightful characters so they have rocker tactile miniature

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special sub mini and ultra mini and they

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all have their own little like i think rocker's the cutest one well

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probably she kind of looks like a pirate except i think that's just supposed to

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be an eye yes yeah so not really pirate but either way

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they're they're supposed to be superhero characters and i i think that's actually

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pretty awesome so next up actually right next to the lobby was the Labs which we

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creatively called lab one and lab two that two it's amazing uh so lab one we

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didn't look at too much that's where they do uh rojas which is like basically

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keeping hazardous stuff out of the products apparently very important uh

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validation as well as new material development and then lab two which was

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where all the super crazy bananas stuff that we somewhat recognized was and was

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the only one that actually had anyone in it today although it was one person

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sitting at the scanning electron microscope looking at one thing so

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apparently nothing failed that day no they have a ton of a crazy expensive

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machinery in here including multiple electron microscopes like you just said

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x-ray machines all this kind of stuff one of them was 50 million yen another

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one was 10 million yen and the total cost of that whole lab just lab 2 was 15

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million us dollars just in case just in case something dies and you need

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to know exactly why down to

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the tiny tiny

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sub microscopic scale the 15 million just in case lab

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so then we had the meeting where everyone introduced themselves

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twice very formal very formal we watched a

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video it was an excellent video and ensures products of consistent

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quality other products for factory automation and industrial applications

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represent approximately good video omron very good video omron next time you want

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to make a video come talk to us come talk to us first we can help you out a

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little bit we'll sort that out for you guys and then it was finally time to get

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suited up i think the best part of this for me was a that they even had

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yes official omron branded like kimonos

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and then the second best part for me was when luke tried to put on the

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one-size-fits-all for japanese people slippers before we

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went into the lab that didn't really work out also my kimono was really short

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priceless flood kimono just in case there's a tsunami you're ready for it i'm oh

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okay we're going there

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wow once we're inside the factory i was

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actually blown away by how loud it was there was a lot going on so

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much stuff happening all the machines are running like some factories you'll

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enter and it's like oh they're only running two or three lines right now it's like nope onron is 100 all the time

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it's crazy so we made our way to the

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very first step in the manufacture of a roamer g-switch where they had like a

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metal big metal spool feeding into a machine

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um that would then split it in two and

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then punch out the like main design

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yeah and then from there it actually goes on to a new reel that then gets

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carried somewhere else in the factory so that's like some cutting edge technology

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real to real that's a joke

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so the next station is where things actually got pretty interesting and i started learning things i did not know

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about romer g switches so there's a couple machines here and at the first

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sort of functional station in the first one it basically places a little like

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super tiny wire the second station actually checks to make sure that it's

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there that's probably a good thing the third one forms it and tries to get it

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within tolerances and then the fourth one checks again but

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with imagery to make sure that it's exactly all laid out how it should be

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and then there's a second machine

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and that entire machine's job is to put another entire set

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of these contact points on which is something i didn't realize

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about romer g switches all switches will have a contact point but like we just

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said there's two sets on this one so if you happen to get dust or some other

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type of material on one of the contact points causing it to fail the other one

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could still work and you wouldn't even notice that there's anything wrong with your keyboard so there's a redundant

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actual actual actuation which

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a few things that you were pointing out which is the differences between japanese manufacturing and german yeah

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because we've seen a few factories now two german ones and one japanese and

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there's no doubt that the germans and the japanese are the most likely of

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anyone in the world to let us see their factory because they're clean they're

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efficient they're organized and they're world-renowned for being great

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manufacturers but we noticed a fundamentally different philosophy

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the germans on the one hand are like kind of measure 50 times make sure it's

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absolutely perfect cut once yeah and you look at the cherry mx switch there's

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only one point of failure but the things don't die yeah whereas the roamer

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g-switch in omron i mean maybe

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and maybe they do but maybe they kind of accept that

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one of those contact points could fail possibly possibly it could but hey if it

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does well there's two so we built that redundant scene for you and another

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thing i learned about romer g's at this station is this is a freaking expensive

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switch the amount of metal in that thing unreal

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another real joke but when they let us into a completely

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different building for the next thing that's what we knew

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was getting real that's another real

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okay anyways the first station it pulls those contacts that we were just working

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with downwards cleans them up a little bit and i was fascinated by that yeah

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you were and then we saw the most innovative human machine

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i've ever seen ever i didn't realize that every romer g switch is literally

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made by people standing next to each other moving them along the production line

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until they're finally blown into the little trays for delivery to logitech by

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yours truly bet you didn't know that either actually that's a bad joke too

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there's a real machine behind all the people that yeah every roamer g-switch

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does not come with some Linus dna you're fine this is legitimately the coolest

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piece of manufacturing equipment i have yet

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seen this thing is balls to the walls bananas and there's two full lineups of

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them so station number one of this monster takes all that metal from before

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that frankly i was wondering how they get all that innocent yeah i was pretty

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worried about that uh so takes all that before cuts it and

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then positions the folded cut pieces vertically a real space saver next up

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those pieces aren't actually aligned properly so it turns it and then kind of

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mushes them together for that awesome redundancy that these switches have next

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that whole thing gets picked up and then placed into the housing that is fed via

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a hopper system from the back with like vibration

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feeding and then like an automated orientation checking thing that's

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actually pretty cool pretty ridiculous next up was lubrication so there's

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actually the lubrication station there's actually

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three different lubrication drops you are the lubrication officer and that is

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where it gets a lot of its 70 million key press validation from is this

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lubrication will last that entire time so after a quick qc stage not the final

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one by any means at all we get to see the little rod that aids light

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transmission added to the switch so

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what's so special about the romer g is that the led actually shines up from the

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middle through this uh light dispersing

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rod and then evenly illuminates the entire top of the key switch a big

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advantage over other mechanical keyswitches in the market which are only

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able to effectively illuminate about half of the switch making them a little

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less a little less even looking for lack of a better word

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next up is where we get a lot of the feel of the switch from so at first we

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add the spring which just kind of gets placed there and then immediately

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afterwards they have the two blue and white pieces fed from hoppers in the

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back and then placed together kind of behind the main assembly line and then

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those two pieces go on top of the spring compressing it all the way down and that

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blue piece is just kind of the top uh housing of the switch then the white

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piece is actually a large plunger this is again where you get a lot of the feel

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from of a roamer g after the top and bottom housing are

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clamped together it's time for the final qc check the switch is pretty much done

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so it's grabbed and then it moves through a number of stations so at the

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first one it's uh warmed up if you know what i mean

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and at the second one it goes through an electronic validation of how the switch

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press feels to an electronic ARM then it goes

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into a like a laser engraving slash

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photo validation chamber and if it passes the validation it gets a laser

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etching on the side of the part number and the manufacturing date where it is

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finally taken off the qc carousel dropped onto an assembly line

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belt and then blasted actually it's awesome i love the little air blast

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blasted by air into the correct tray

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inside one of the bins for eventual delivery to logitech

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what a cool cool piece of machinery definitely one

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of the best automated assembly lines i've ever seen

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we haven't seen that many that's true for those of you wondering what happens

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to those switches that didn't make it to the conveyor belt of epic awesome win

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well they are validated as failed and then pulled off the line immediately and

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sorted by why they failed so if there's a main reason why a whole bunch of

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switches are failing they'll know exactly what's going on they can take

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those back to the lab they also don't get a laser engraving at all so if your

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keyboard for some reason had no laser markings on the bottom it's made out of

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failed switches that someone somehow managed to obtain from a dumpster behind

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omron and you should probably get that checked out yeah

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speaking of checking out we're checking out and so uh the only folks left to

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talk to you are actually some pretty important guys that we met here from

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both logitech and omron who want to talk about a little bit more behind the

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scenes what exactly got into their heads when

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they went oh yeah well let's just take

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gaming mechanical key switches and completely reinvent them

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which i actually discussed quite deeply with one of them while naked in a hot

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spring did you really i did that's hot

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it is it was

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so logitech was looking at the market and we saw that there wasn't a

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mechanical switch that was built specifically for a gaming application

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omron is well known throughout the world for building mechanical switches so that

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seemed like a natural partner to build a gaming switch from the ground up

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here

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the this project took us about the two and two and a half or three years to

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finish the adjective tool for building the aromagy switches is for

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live longer move faster and much

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brighter than the one we have today the actuation distance went to 1.5

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millimeters instead of two it gives you an advantage within the context of a

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game to do your action much more quickly than your opponent we increased the

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durability by 40 over a standard mechanical switch that's out on the

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market today up to 70 million activations and in regards to

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reliability there are two activation points so as you're pushing down even if

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one fouls the other one will continue activation so there's no risk of a a

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lost action in a gaming environment

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my