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Originally Posted by CronosPrime1
Can anyone tell me the difference between a Heavy Duty Toggle Switch and a Medium Duty Toggle Switch? What is meant by these terms?
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For a FIRST team, the difference is minimal for an operator interface. The differece between the two may be either a one-million stroke warrenty or a ten-million stroke warrenty. Either way, you are
never going to approach that kind of numbers in only one season, even if you have to hit fire every time you fire a Poof ball.
We used some of
these medium-duty toggle switched for our OI in 2004, and they worked fine. The
push buttons we used on our 2005 OI were rated at 10,000,000 cycles, and they held up fine.
Just make sure the buttons are BIG and easy to hit! Using little tiny toggle switches may seem like a good idea, but can lead to a poor design choice. Especially if you have a few near each other, the driver has to look down during the match to find the right one. This detracts from the time the drivers have to actually get the robot from point A to point B and score. As the operator / co-driver for my team last year, I cannot stress how much easier it is for the drivers to have big buttons.
EDIT: If possible, try to find replacement buttons for arcade machines. We've had good luck with
Happ Controls with my team. Besides being really cool, these buttons were designed with rough play and long life in mind.
