Omron Factory Tour - The Making of a Logitech Romer-G Switch
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,395 words · ~11 min read
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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