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This story started as a high school “passion project” where the students of ISZL, Switzerland were asked to plan, document and design something they were passionate about. Since we have two PC gamers in the family it was only natural that we focused on bringing something new to the sport of PC gaming.
In our case, the goal was to solve a problem related to mouse control, precision and palm friction. We decided to approach the challenge in a structured way, applying different technologies and research to acheive our goal. The success criteria was to enhance gaming performance, and add something new to the sport using science and research.
With the latest and greatest in terms of PC mouse hardware, we set out to test the leading gaming mouse pads according to reviews and blogs. We quickly realised that hard surface mouse pads offered the least friction between the PC mouse and the mouse pad, however, they also came with the drawback of sticking to the palm of the hand quite quickly and also causing the hand to sweat.
We tried different metal surface textures and surface coatings, such as teflon and we even looked at a coating used on attack helicopter rotor blades, but the end result was still the same, in our case the hard surfaces produced sweaty palms shortly after starting a gaming session. We concluded that a soft fabric mouse pad was preferred if we could find or produce a fabric with the properties we were after.
The textiles and foam surfaces we tried offered better comfort, but unfortunately they also produced more friction between the pad and the mouse as well as the palm of the hand compared to the hard surface pads.
When we received a fabric sample from a UK based company called Parafricta, things started falling into place. Parafricta has a patented, clinically proven low friction fabric technology, designed to protect the human skin from different kinds of friction damage. Their fabric is being used in healthcare for things like wound dressings or to protect the fragile skin of neonatal children etc.
The properties of the fabric sounded like a match made in heaven and the first prototype proved that the friction part of the problem we were trying to solve was a success! The challenge now was to attach the fabric to a rubber base without altering the friction characteristics, as well as enabling the optical sensor of a modern gaming mouse with an easy to scan texture to solve the precision part of the puzzle as well.
We learned that combining a smooth low-friction fabric with an easy to scan texture for an optical mouse to achieve the highest precision was another nut to crack. In our case, the solution turned out to be a combination of optimising reflective properties and a special type of colouring technique.
Several prototypes later, we knew we had achieved our success criteria when one of our pro gamer testers left the Gruntech mousepad prototype on top of his Japanese imported custom XXL pro-gamer mousepad. Normally the testers agree to give feedback on our mousepad and then quickly return to their original mousepad. This time, the gamer said he never played as well as he did with our prototype and did not want to return it. Success!
The Gruntech e-sport mouse pad is using the exact same technology and materials as the one we never got back from the pro gaming tester. We have optimised the production process to ensure the mouse pad has the finish and quality that can be expected by a Swiss producer, but the properties are the same and we can proudly say that we are bringing something new to the sport of PC gaming world. We hope that you will enjoy it as much as we do and improve your gaming experience as well.