Wee Omron switch

[Daniel Beardsmore]

harry ke notified me this morning about a new Omron switch he's got available:

40pcs-lot-NEW-original-keyboard-Switch-for-Omron-switch.jpg (37.03 KiB) Viewed 2292 times

I've been aware of this switch for a while, but having not seen the branding (and being out of stock) I figured it was a lazy Futaba ML series clone. It's actually Omron, and the legs don't have flat sections so I assume they don't unscrew.

Just as with the "Alps-style" switch, it doesn't have the series name included in the mould, so it's completely unidentifiable. It does look like a Taiwanese clone, all the same.

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/produc ... 56680.html

For 10 pieces, it's $90! At $9/switch, I'm going to give this one a miss, but I'll leave it here as a curiosity.

(It's $4.90/switch if you buy 40 but then you've paid more than twice as much anyway.)

[Ail]

https://world.taobao.com/item/19181633682.htm

Same switch for $.22 on Taobao. Same seller as well judging by that picture ID number.

I'm doing another big switch order from Taobao in the near future, just trying to get as many together as possible that I don't have. The same guy who sold me the collection I posted previously is compiling a new set featuring rare MX mount clone switches and a few others. I will probably pick up any other switches like this as well. I will order a few extras if you like, but it might be awhile before they arrive.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Are you absolutely positive about that? I'd like to point this out to harry ke, but of course I can't read a word of Chinese, so there's no sense using this in evidence against him if it doesn't say what you think it says :) (No hidden catches or anything.)

I do want these switches, but not at a stupid price!

[Ail]

I'm only positive that it appears to be the exact same switch and picture on the listing, but there's no saying it isn't a recycled image. The store's name is "Shenzhen Fortis Fu electronic."

That's all I can tell you, I don't read Chinese either and I'm going completely off shoddy Google translates.

I will order some however because at .22 per switch, there's not much to lose even if they are a clone, fake, different, etc.

Edit: I do find it odd the Aliexpress version has the Chinese characters covered over as if to hide something from someone, who or, why, we can only speculate.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Copying each other's product images and crossing out the seller IDs is quite normal! I've passed on the URL to that TaoBao entry, just to see what reaction I get.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Different source, apparently.

I will order some however because at .22 per switch, there's not much to lose even if they are a clone, fake, different, etc

At that price I may as well buy 50 from you and then I'll have plenty in stock for some time!

[Ail]

Different source, apparently.

I will order some however because at .22 per switch, there's not much to lose even if they are a clone, fake, different, etc

At that price I may as well buy 50 from you and then I'll have plenty in stock for some time!

Is that how many you want? I only need a couple of each switch I order for myself, but will order as many as you want/need when I do.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Correct — I like having lots of spares of all kinds of switches.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Incidentally, is there any particular trick to TaoBao, or is it just a matter of slogging through pages of search results? You found that Omron switch remarkably quickly!

They might have these for sale at a lower price:

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/produc ... 89312.html

The only 2nd generation SMK switch with a known part number. (KKM0611-0001, although it's not shown in that particular set of images.)

[Ail]

Incidentally, is there any particular trick to TaoBao, or is it just a matter of slogging through pages of search results? You found that Omron switch remarkably quickly!

They might have these for sale at a lower price:

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/produc ... 89312.html

The only 2nd generation SMK switch with a known part number. (KKM0611-0001, although it's not shown in that particular set of images.)

Yes, but only coincidentally because it was already in my long list of Taobao mechanical switches I have saved in a notepad. It's kinda funny because when I saw the picture you posted of that switch it was fresh in my head as I spent the large majority of my previous Saturday digging through Taobao sellers to find as many switches as I could. Prior to Saturday I only had a short list of about 4 -5 listings most of which were Cherry clones like the yellow, dark, and pale blue. Now I have a much longer list.

As for that SMK switch, that one I have not found, however other SMK switches are on Taobao so there's a good chance those are out there, I just haven't stumbled in to them yet. Which, to answer your initial question, there is no trick to finding anything quickly unless perhaps you know Chinese. The way I do it is to find one product that is exact, or similar to what I am trying to find, and in the search results most listings will have an option when you hover over the preview picture to "Look for similar" It's basically a "find more listings like this one" feature from E-bay. So you click that and hope it pulls up a bunch more listings that are like the one you initially found with your broken Chinese search. It can be switches, keyboards, keycaps, whatever. Then the next thing I will do is click on the seller page of one of the listings I am looking for and dig through their other products to see what else is there.

So for example if I am trying to find an SMK switch, I will type 'SMK 开关' in the search. Then in the results I will scroll down to an SMK switch that is from a keyboard and hover over the picture for the 'Look for similar' option. If it is there I click that and it will bring up a new page with the results of that search, which is a 2 page maximum. So even if there are 5 pages of similar items, it will only show you two pages. So the real trick here is to have a strong enough initial search so that you have as many products as possible to "Look for similar' on. You cannot use the 'Look for similar' option on results that are produced from the initial 'Look for similar' query, so you want as many hits as possible in the first search. The 'Look for similar' query will always be stronger than your broken Chinese search because it compares the original listing to other listings with the titles and descriptions in their untranslated form.

The problem with companies like SMK and ALPS is that they have so many products that are not keyboard related, it makes it difficult to find exactly what you are looking for without going through a dillion pages of other switches or unrelated items. Especially when you are trying to piece everything together with some broken Google translate queries.

If you want my list of listings with switches, I will post it.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

The interesting Omron switches (those and B2R) are listed under what TaoBao Focus calls the "Switching element" category. This has 67 pages of results, but by page 67, none of them have appeared! On page 67, the page count increases to 100 but no further pages exist. I don't see any sign of categorisation on the original Chinese pages.

None of the B2R listings support "Look for similar". The ones above do, but that gives you very little, and nothing I don't already have.

I think I'll write TaoBao off for anything other than accidental discoveries — I've found a few things in the past that I'd have liked to have bought, but what those were, I have no idea.