Longevity of 2015 Gaterons

[Blaise170]

Anyone have a good idea for how long Gaterons are supposed to last? I've had my Varmilo just sitting in a bin for the past year and it seems that a good 25% of the keys are either bouncing or not responding. Tried two different devices and it is the same keys as well so that rules out the Bluetooth as the issue.

[hansichen]

As far as I know Varmilo does not grant any warranty on products with gateron switches, this is only available for cherry switch products and early gateron switches had lots of problems,I personally wouldn't expect too much out of them. But in that case it sounds a bit weird as you haven't used the board at all. You can try shorting the pins on the pcb, if that doesn't work it sounds more like a pcb failure and not a switch thing.

[Wodan]

I had the suspicion that Gateron switches might feel a bit smoother due to a less firm or thinner contact leaf. As much of the percieved friction from MX switches results from the switch leaf on slider contact, having a weaker switch leaf or one with less tension would be an easy way to smoothen your switches and maybe even save costs ...

It's all a theory and I couldn't really find any hard evidence for that. Just my very rudimentary attemts at measuring switch smoothness through audio wave form pickup kinda went into the direction that very scratchy MX Red sliders behaved a little less sctrachy in Gateron housings...

Oh yeah and one thing to always keep in mind here. MX switches are help open against the pressure of the switch leaf when idle so you are actually compressing the switch leaf when you DON'T use the keyboard.

[Blaise170]

Well I have no problem swapping in my Cherry switches, but I also do not want to swap them in if it's not a switch issue. I didn't know that about the leaf though. Seems weird because I've found WYSE boards that look like they haven't been used in 20 years that still work (MX Blacks) yet this just seems completely random.

[consolation]

They should last many decades of constant use. The gat greens I used to build a board for my gf have lasted couple years of daily use in her primary driver. This is a board that travels in a laptop bag and has been abused terribly... The most likely point of failure are poor solder joints, especially if unleaded solder was used. It's no so bad in plated keyboards, but on pcb mounts, that type of solder is lethal. Regular flex just rots them.


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[kekstee]

Thing is that we have no idea how long Gateron is supposed to last. Even assuming the claim of 50M actuations I've seen floating around is correct, we don't even know at what percentile. Is there something like an official datasheet anywhere which clarifies on that?
Cherry guarantees 50M, average lifetime is said to be north of 100M actuations. And 30 year old boards still work mostly fine, used or not. So there's that.

For the problem at hand it's a reasonable suggestion to see if shorted pins behave like they should or not. It does sound like a switch issue though.

[rich1051414]

It has just sat in a bin? Did you check the solder joints?

[Blaise170]

Haven't checked yet but it worked fine before getting placed into the bin.