Gadgetory

konnichiwa Linus tech tips viewers we are coming to you live from Japan not live in fact by the time you're watching this I'll not only have come back from Japan but also traveled somewhere else and probably be back from there too so not live but definitely from Japan I can prove it look that's Japan and we're wearing these robes so clearly we're not lying and today we did something pretty exciting courtesy of logitech we got to tour the omron factory right here in Japan where they make the roamer G switches in Logitech's D 910 Oh Ryan spark keyboard and it was actually a lot more interesting than I thought it would be it was kind of awesome stay tuned so the tour kind of began in the lobby and what I didn't actually know when we showed up was that Omron actually makes a ton of different types of switches so automotive factory automation and then kind of what we're mainly interested the more consumer side of things I thought they just made like now switches and and not even then they have a whole bunch of different categories for the types of switches that they have with these little delightful characters so they have rocker tactile miniature special sub mini and ultra mini and they all have their own little like superhero rockers the cutest mine rock well probably it kind of looks like a pirate except I think that's just supposed to be an eye yes yeah no not really pirate but either way they're they're supposed to be superhero characters and I think that's actually pretty awesome so next up actually right next to the lobby was the labs which we creatively called lab 1 and lab 2 - it's amazing so lab 1 we didn't look at too much that's where they do row has which is like basically keeping hazardous stuff out of the products apparently very important validation as well as new material development and then lab 2 which was where all the super crazy bananas stuff that we somewhat recognized was and was the only one that actually had anyone in it today although it was one person sitting at the scanning electron microscope looking at one thing so apparently nothing failed that day no they have a ton of a crazy expensive machinery in here including multiple electron microscopes like you just said x-ray machines all those kind of stuff one of them was 50 million yen another one was 10 million yen and the total cost of that whole Lab just lab 2 was 15 million u.s. dollars just in case just in case something dies and you need to know exactly why down to the tiny tiny sub microscopic scale the 15 million dollar just in case lab so then we had the meeting where everyone introduce themselves twice please yeah very formal very formal we watched a video is excellent video products of consistent quality other products for faculty information and industrial applications members and importantly good video very good video on run next time you want to make a video come talk to us contact us first and help you out a little we sort that out for you guys and then it was finally time to get suited up I think the best part of this for me was a that they even had yes official arm run branded like kimonos and then the second best part for me was when Luke tried to put on the one-size-fits-all for Japanese people slippers before we went into the lab that didn't really work out also my kimono was really short priceless flood kimono just in case there's a tsunami you're ready for it I'm okay if we're going there Wow once we're inside the factory I was actually blown away by how loud it was do you know what going on so much stuff happening all the machines are running like some factories you'll enter and it's like oh they're only running two or three lines right now it's like nope Omron is 100% all time that's crazy so we made our way to the very first step in the manufacture of a Romer G switch where they had like a metal big metal spool feeding into machine um that would then split it in two and then punch out the like main design yeah and then from there actually goes on to a new reel but then gets carried somewhere else in the factory so that's like some cutting edge technology reel-to-reel that's a joke so the next station is where things actually got pretty interesting and I started learning things I did not know about romaji switches so there's a couple machines here and at the first sort of functional station in the first one it basically places a little like super tiny wipe the second stationary checks to make sure that it's there it's probably good thing the third one phors it and tries to get it within tolerances and then the fourth one checks again but with imagery to make sure that it's exactly all laid out how it should and then there's a second machine and that entire machines job is to put another entire set of these contact points on which is something I didn't realize about romaji switches all switches will have a contact point but like we just said there's two sets on this one so if you happen to get dust or some other type of material and one of the contact points causing it to fail the other one could still work and you wouldn't even notice that there's anything wrong with you people so there's a redundant actual actual actuation which brought a few things that you were pointing out which is the differences between Japanese manufacturing and German many yeah cuz we've seen a few factories now two German ones and one Japanese and there's no doubt that the Germans and the Japanese are the most likely of anyone in the world to let us see their factory because they're clean they're efficient they're organized and they're world renowned for being great manufacturers but we notice two fundamentally different philosophy the Germans on the one hand are like kind of measure fifty times make sure it's absolutely perfect cut one yeah and you look at the cherry on X which there's only one point of failure but the things don't die yeah whereas the Romer G switch an arm Ron I mean maybe and negative but maybe they kind of accept that one of those contact points could fail possibly possibly it could but if it does well there's two so we don't that redundant seen for you and another thing I learned about Romer G is at this station is this is a freaking expensive switch the amount of metal in that thing unreal another real joke but when they led us into a completely different building for the next thing that's what we knew was getting real that's another real joke no okay anyways the first day should it pulls those contacts that we were just working with downwards cleans them up a little bit and I fascinated by that yeah you were and then we saw the most innovative human machine I have ever seen ever I didn't realize that every Roemer juice which is literally made by people standing next to each other moving them along the production line until they're finally blown into the little trays fertile Arita logitech by yours truly that you didn't know that either actually that's a bad joke too there's a real machine behind all the people yeah every rumor juice which does not come with some Linus DNA and one this is legitimately the coolest piece of manufacturing equipment I have yet seen this thing is balls to the walls bananas and there's two full lineups of them so station number one of this monster takes all that metal from before that frankly I was wondering how they get all that in a CEO is pretty readable Peggy so takes a little app before cuts it and then positions the folded cut pieces vertically a real space saver next up those pieces aren't actually aligned properly so it turns it and then kind of mushes them together for that awesome redundancy that these widgets have next that whole thing gets picked up and then placed into the housing that is fed via a hopper system from the back with like vibration feeding and then like an automated orientation checking thing that's actually pretty cool pretty ridiculous next up was lubrication so there's actually the lubrication station there's actually three different lubrication drug you are the lubrication and that is where it gets a lot of its 70 million keypress validation from is the this lubrication will last that entire time so after a quick QC stage not the final one by any means at all we get to see the little rod that aids light transmission added to the switch so what's so special about the romaji is that the LED actually shines up from the middle through this light dispersing rod and then evenly illuminates the entire top of the key switch a big advantage over other mechanical key switches in the market which are only able to effectively illuminate about half of the switch making them a little less a little less even looking for lack of a better word next up is where we get a lot of the feel of the switch from so at first we add the spring which just kind of gets placed there and then immediately afterwards they have the two blue and white pieces fed from hoppers in the back and then placed together kind of behind the main assembly line and then those two pieces go on top of the spring compressing it all the way down and that blue piece is just kind of the top housing of the switch then the white piece is actually a large plunger this is again where you get a lot of the feel from of a romaji after the top and bottom housing or clamps together it's time for the final QC check the switch is pretty much done so it's grabbed and then it moves through a number of stations so that's the first one it's a warmed up if you know what I mean and at the second one it goes through an electronic validation of how the switch press feels to an electronic arm then it goes into a like a laser engraving slash photo validation chamber and if it passes the validation it gets a laser etching on the side of the part number and the manufacturing date where it is finally taken off the QC carousel dropped on to an assembly line belt and then blasted actually it's awesome I love the little air blast blasted by air into the correct tray inside one of the bins for eventual delivery to logitech what a cool cool piece of machinery definitely one of the best automated assembly lines I've ever seen we haven't seen that many that's true but those of you wondering what happens to those switches that didn't make it to the conveyor belt of epic awesome win well they are validated as failed and then pulled off the line immediately and sorted by why they failed so if there main reason why whole bunch of switches are failing they'll know exactly what's going they can take those back to the lab they also don't get a laser engraving at all so if your keyboard for some reason have no laser markings on the bottom it's made out of failed switches that someone somehow managed to obtain from a dumpster behind on run you should probably get that checked out yeah speaking of checking out we're checking out and so the only folks left to talk to you are actually some pretty important guys that we met here from both Logitech and Omron who want to talk about a little bit more behind the scenes what exactly got into their heads when they win oh yeah well let's just take gaming mechanical key switches and completely reinvent them which I actually discussed quite deeply with one of them while naked in a hot spring did you really I did that's hot it is it was so Logitech was looking at the market and we saw that there wasn't a mechanical switch that was built specifically for gaming application Omron is well known throughout the world for building mechanical switches so that seemed like a natural partner to build a gaming switch from the ground up seats new Hisoka close to time in law so there was this original ticket like adding a pool the Hancock will quote a sick kid he is going to smita today the latest news can total change over scenarios the this project took us about via two and two and half or three years to finish the objective tour for building the aroma G switches is born live longer move faster and much brighter than the what we have today the actuation distance went to 1.5 millimeters instead of 2 it gives you an advantage within the context of a game to do your action much more quickly than your opponent we increase the durability by 40% over a standard mechanical switch that's out on the market today up to 70 million activations in regards to reliability there are two activation points so as you're pushing down even if one fouls the other one will continue to activation so there's no risk of a lost action and again environment no chicks a mental partner I'd say partnership with a mosquito net to do with sex tomorrow Corey Molitor has Monroes on Dana Patrick oh sorry Nicotero quadratic you know what I said certain winners