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Omron makes keyboard switches?
They make a specific switch that Logitech and Das have started using, B3K
Interesting. I’m looking at the force curve, it looks similar to Ergo Clear. Am I reading that right?
Yeah looks right
That’s disappointing, but not surprising. Cherry was very conservative with their switches for such a long time that they got lapped by the OEMs that initially were just making poor clones. I thought they were finally showing some initiative when they released the pre-made Ergo-Clears as well as RGB MX Clears, but I guess it was too little too late.
Rust Belt on the Rhine: The deindustrialization of Germany
Put simply, the formula that made Germany Europe’s industrial powerhouse — a highly skilled workforce and innovative companies powered by cheap energy — has come undone.
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So basically they are in trouble and in order to appease their creditor they need to reduce costs? Moving production to China might reduce quality, but Cherry switches are only used in prebuilds for people with no knowledge or experience with custom boards so I don’t think it will matter. Unless something big changed from when I stopped paying attention onward, almost nobody puts contemporary Cherry switches in their builds.
What switches do people use now? I only ever had Cherrys until i switched to buckling springs. Most boards i see in stores dont seem to use Cherry, there is some sort of sheath on the switch stems now.
I still have one Cherry green board i really like. It seems built to last, and the switches feel great.
What switches do people use now?
The “now” part I’m not sure about because I’m out of the hobby for some years. The “people” part depends on who we are talking about. Maybe Cherry is still popular in boards you can buy in shops or on big online stores, I don’t know. But in my time, Cherry was far from a popular choice to put in custom keyboards. Almost all switches used were cherry style switches, meaning they fit the same keycaps, are roughly of the same size, fit in the same pcb’s, etc. But people usually get them from other companies, eg Kailh, Gateron, etc. There is just more choice in terms of materials, colours, bump profile, smoothness, springs, click mechanism, you name it. It was also common to combine switches, like using the top of one switch with the bottom of another or swap stems. Other brands were perceived to be higher quality. Cherrys were known for being scratchy instead of smooth, having a weak tactile bump, clicky variations being rattly instead of crisp as well as lacking in some other areas such as stem wobble and sound. For example, I’m typing right now on Gateron Ink Black v2 switches lubed with Tribosys 3204, filmed with Kebo films and springs swapped for bag lubed Tx L 16mm 62gr springs. On the other hand, there is a smaller group of people that is all about vintage Cherry switches, desoldering them from old boards to use them in new builds. The sheath on the stem switches you saw are probably some sort of box switches (I think it’s supposed to reduce stem wobble and thus smoothness in practice).
So, just in the past year or two they’ve finally released switches from new molds (“MX2A”) that are quite well regarded, but not special enough to make up for what must be very high operating costs. Unlike GMK, they squandered an early lead in the enthusiast space and never got it back. They just took much, much too long to relaize that the viable markets for mech boards are gamers and people with varying degrees of enthusiasm for the hardware itself, not just an aging cohort of office workers who refuse to put up with membranes.
