June update: some final tweaks before mass production
almost 4 years ago – Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 01:31:46 AM

Hello from Oakland!

Since we last wrote, we’ve shipped out all Early Delivery keyboards for which we have shipping information. A few stragglers still haven’t filled out their BackerKit surveys. We’ve been working with the factory to fine-tune the mass production keyboards based on feedback from Early Delivery customers. As of now, we believe we’re on track to ship out keyboards and travel cases in August. We’re fairly confident that we’ll be ready to ship out the wooden palm rests at the same time, but aren’t yet 100% sure of that.

Issues we’re working on

So far, the feedback from Early Delivery customers has been very positive. There are two “showstopper” issues reported by a few customers that we're working to fix before mass production. We've also made one small design improvement.

Keycaps

We're continuing to work on issues with the laser-engraved legends on the keycaps. In a previous update, we mentioned that the factory had gone through a number of plastic formulations before they found a mixture of PBT which would end up with bright, easily readable legends when laser-engraved. The reason this is difficult is that unlike some other plastics, pure PBT typically turns a dark brown when hit with a laser. The nominal solution is to dope the PBT with additives that turn white. After 8 rounds of testing with different formulations, the factory was pretty sure they’d nailed it. The legends were a little bit more gold-toned than pure white, but they were clear and bright. Tests in the lab with alcohol and with a finger simulator of some variety all suggested that we’d found a reasonable solution. We saw a little bit of dimming after prolonged abrasion, but it didn’t appear to be significant.

Unfortunately, last week we started to get reports that after a week or two of heavy use, some keys appeared to fade pretty dramatically. The eventual result, once the legends fully fade is not unattractive, but it’s not what we promised.

We brought the issue up with the factory and they agreed that this is a showstopper for mass production. After additional discussions with their raw plastic supplier and their laser engraving partner, the factory believes that they won’t be able to hit the quality bar that they need to hit by laser-engraving black PBT.

From a technical perspective, the simplest solution would be to switch to ABS keycaps, but we know that many of you would strongly prefer PBT caps. PBT has a slightly different feel than ABS, is a bit heavier, and is generally less prone to developing a shine over time. We consider switching to ABS a last resort.

As of now, we have two possible options for legends. The factory is evaluating them in parallel. The first is to switch to silk-screened legends. Silk-screening is “normal” technology that the factory uses day in and day out. It’s a low risk choice that should result in clear, bright legends. The second possible technique is a little bit more complicated and possibly a lot more expensive. The factory’s only used it once before, though we know it’s sometimes used by hobbyists. It is, in theory, possible to produce white PBT keycaps, dye them black, and laser-ablate the legends, revealing the white plastic hiding inside. In theory, this can produce crisp, long-lived legends, but without much experience doing it, it’s a much riskier path forward.

We expect to know what we’re going to do in about a week. As of today, we’d bet that we’ll end up silk-screening the legends.

The factory has told us that they plan to produce extra sets of keycaps to replace the defective sets for early-delivery customers who want them. More on that front as we know.

Speed Copper switches

We’ve had four reports of duplicated keystrokes from customers typing on Speed Copper switches. Unintended duplicated keystrokes is often the result of key chatter. For example, you might type “test” and the keyboard would output “ttest” or “tesst”. Under the hood, what’s happening is that the electrical contacts in the switch are bouncing back and forth as you press a key. With limited exceptions, this is 100% normal for mechanical keyswitches; one part of the firmware's job is to "debounce" the signal and interpret it as a single keypress. 

The manufacturer specifies that keyboard devices need to wait for 5 milliseconds after a switch changes state before being sure that the change is “real.” Based on what we’re seeing, some Speed Copper switches may need to be debounced for 7 or 8 milliseconds. In a few cases, the customers seeing this issue have reported that the switches started behaving more normally after additional typing. In others, the right fix has been an update to the Atreus’ firmware to do more careful debouncing.

As of today, we’ve not been able to reproduce the issue in the lab, so we’ve been working with a couple of customers who are seeing the issue to refine the required firmware updates.

While it’s easy to update your keyboard’s firmware with Chrysalis, we currently expect that these changes will be included in the firmware that ships on keyboards from the first mass production run.

If you were with us for the Model 01, you’ll know that the switches we used for that keyboard were particularly prone to key chatter early in their lives. The root cause of that problem was excessive lubricant applied during the switch manufacturing. So far, we don’t believe that what we’re seeing with the Speed Copper switches is the same issue. (These switches are made by a different manufacturer, among other differences.) We’re fairly confident that the software fix will be a reasonable solution.

In the case of the Speed Copper switches, some of the duplicated presses may just be an acclimatization issue. As early-delivery customers are starting to get comfortable with their new keyboards, we’ve had a few reports that the early actuation points on the Speed Copper switches can take some getting used to. Because the switches register a keypress after just 1.1mm of travel, you might find that you don’t need to type with as much force as you’re used to. 

USB C cable connection

About three weeks ago, we discovered that some third-party USB C cables with larger plastic heads didn’t fit comfortably into the port on the back of the Atreus. 

The cable that ships with the Atreus has been tested to work well. So far, we haven’t had any reports of issues with the USB C connector or third-party USB C cables from customers. However, we've discovered a way to tweak our design to improve it. 

While there are some public guidelines about the recommended sizes of the plastic parts of USB C cable heads, there is a lot of variation between manufacturers. Some vendors’ cables have extra long metal plugs and smaller plastic heads. Some operate at the very limits of the USB C specification. In particular, Apple’s USB C cables are designed to fit perfectly flush when plugged into your MacBook. When we tried plugging an Apple USB C cable into the Atreus, it made an electrical connection, but didn’t latch fully in place. After testing 25+ different cables, no other major brand’s cable had the same sort of issues, but we found 4 other unbranded cables that couldn’t make solid connections to the Atreus.

We raised the issue with the factory and they agreed that this was worth fixing. 24 hours after we first raised the issue to them, their mechanical engineer proposed a design change to the plastic tray. 24 hours after that, we approved and paid for the new design. It took the factory about a week to make the tooling change. The updated sample is on its way to us for final confirmation. We’re expecting it sometime this coming week.

Palm rests

As we thought might happen, wooden palm rests are running a bit behind the other parts. It took the wood factory a little bit longer than expected to send us a sample of the final design, which fixes some tolerance issues with the keyboard cutout, slightly thickens the bottom off the palm rest to improve robustness, and adds non-marking silicone feet. There was a packaging snafu for the sample — rather than being boxed, it was sent to us in a padded envelope. The good news is that it came out almost perfect. The bad news is that it was not in fact perfect. One corner is ever so slightly warped—maybe half a millimeter. The vendor assures us that it was perfectly flat before they dropped it in the mail. It is quite possible that the issue is due to mistreatment in transit, but we’re not chancing it. The supplier is going to make the final sample out of a harder walnut, which they typically use for flooring. That one, they’ll send to us in a proper shipping box. Assuming it looks good, we’ll sign off on it and they’ll start production.

The schedule

There’s a pretty good chance that palm rests will be finished and in our distribution warehouse before the end of August, but until we sign off on the golden sample and pay the deposit, the vendor won’t be able to commit to a schedule. We’re pushing hard to deliver on time, but we’d rather ship palm rests a few weeks after keyboards and travel cases than compromise on quality.

Travel cases are in production, with a projected completion date sometime in the first half of July. If the travel cases are done before the keyboards are, we’ll hold them so we can ship keyboards and cases together.

The components with the longest lead times typically drive the production schedule for a product. In the case of the Keyboardio Atreus, the long lead time components are the Kailh key switches and hot-swap sockets. As of this past Friday, Kailh expects to deliver the hot-swap sockets to our factory on July 6. The key switches will follow on July 10. Assembly will begin shortly thereafter. Assuming that we get the keycap legend issue sorted out in time, the factory is currently estimating that final assembly could happen as early as July 20. From there, we’ll send in an external quality assurance engineer to do spot checks. If the engineer signs off, the keyboards may end up in our distribution warehouse as early as August 1.

What’s next

Expect an update from us in late July. With luck, we’ll be able to tell you that keyboards and travel cases are packed up and ready to go and that palm rests are in production.

<3 Jesse + Kaia

Early Delivery keyboards are on their way!
almost 4 years ago – Mon, Jun 01, 2020 at 12:55:03 AM

Hi!

We wanted to check in today with a very brief status update.

Early Delivery keyboards

During the campaign, we offered up 150 keyboards from our pilot run with an anticipated ship date of May 2020.

We’re pleased to report that we pushed orders to the warehouse to ship out 140 out of 150 orders on Saturday, May 30.  All of those orders are boxed and labeled. Some were picked up by carriers on Saturday and some will be picked up by carriers early this week.

If your keyboard is one of the 140, you should have received email from us with a tracking link last night.

Due to a mixup at the warehouse, a batch of Speed Copper keyboards was sent to us in California, leaving us five units short in Hong Kong. We expect those keyboards to arrive in Oakland on Tuesday. When they do, we’ll get those five orders out to the backers in Canada, India, and South Africa who are expecting them. We're sending those backers an email tonight.

We’re still waiting for shipping address confirmations from five of you. Once we have your addresses, we’ll send your keyboards.

The shipping industry is a bit of a mess right now. We’ve been working with EasyShip, our shipping partner to figure out the best available shipping options. The carriers we’d expected to use have suspended operations due to a lack of international freight capacity. Other carriers have raised their rates. Consequently, we’ve ended up having to use more expensive carriers than originally planned. At the same time, most carriers have told us that deliveries will take longer than normal. We’re keeping an eye on the shipments, but it’s always ok to reach out to us at [email protected] if you have questions.

Mass Production Keyboards and accessories 

We’ll have more to say about the mass production run later this month, but we’re happy to report that everything appears to be on track to ship in August.

We placed the order for travel cases last week.

We’ve finished contract and pricing negotiations with the keyboard factory, have submitted a PO for the order and expect to wire them the deposit this week.

The palm rest is lagging a bit behind the other parts, but has a slightly shorter production timeline. The wood CNC factory is currently working on an updated sample for us. Once they finish it, they’ll ship it to us to approve. At that point, we’ll wire them the deposit and they’ll begin mass production.

<3 Jesse + Kaia

We've been busy
almost 4 years ago – Sat, May 16, 2020 at 05:53:58 AM

Hi!

We're writing today with an update on your Keyboardio Atreus.

By now, you should have received email from BackerKit asking you to confirm your shipping address, keyswitch type, and add any accessories you might want with your Atreus. If you backed for a May-delivery keyboard, your survey should have arrived last week. If you backed for an August-delivery keyboard, your survey should have arrived in the last day or two.

Even if you backed for an August-delivery keyboard, we need you to fill out your survey now.

We need to place the mass-production order with the factory soon. In order to do that, we need to be able to tell them how many keyswitches of each type they need to order. To figure that out, we need you to tell us whether you want a keyboard with BOX White, BOX Red, BOX Brown, or Speed Copper switches.

You'll be able to update your shipping address right up until we need to send the information to our shipping partner. (And BackerKit will send you an email notification a few days before we lock the survey)

A quiet design improvement

During the campaign, some of you reached out to us about wanting a quieter Keyboardio Atreus.

When we discussed this with the factory, they recommended adding a thin sheet of sound-dampening foam inside the keyboard. They built out a couple prototypes and sent them over to us last week. Measured from about 5 feet away, the foam seems to reduce the typing volume of the keyboard by 3-5dB, which is about a 10% reduction in total volume. Because it’s mostly removing noise at higher frequencies, the foam makes the switch sound a bit deeper and more satisfying.

Last week, we gave the factory the go-ahead to get die-cut tooling made for the foam and to plan to include it in all mass-production keyboards. On Wednesday, they surprised us with the news that the tooling was already done and that we’d be able to include the foam in May-delivery keyboards. If you end up deciding you want a louder keyboard, it's very straightforward to unscrew your keyboard and remove the foam.

May-delivery keyboards

Schedule

We believe we are still on track to ship out May-delivery keyboards this month, but it might be tight.

On Monday, the factory told us that they have all the parts for May-delivery keyboards in-house and expected to do the assembly this week.

The last parts we'd been waiting on were the PBT keycaps and the aluminum keyplates.

The aluminum keyplates had been delayed because of anodizing issues. The first two times they’d attempted to anodize the plates, there had been small but noticeable imperfections near the screw nuts on up to 80% of the keyplates. The factory ended up deciding to throw away the defective keyplates and remake the parts at their own cost. Twice. After some process improvements, this batch came back clean.

Issues like this are why it’s important to start mass production with a small “pilot” run of a small number of units.  It’s much easier to fix problems when they only affect a couple hundred units.

Keycaps

The keycaps are, unfortunately, a different story.

On Wednesday, the factory started the laser-engraving of the May-delivery keycaps. But there was a problem. The laser-engraving on the keycaps...wasn’t working.  After rubbing with a fingernail, the legends faded and lost contrast.

This is something we’d seen early in the development process. The kind of plastic we’re using, PBT, tends to turn dark when hit with a laser engraver.  The normal way to work around this kind of problem is to “dope” the PBT plastic with additives that turn bright white when hit with a laser.

We knew we’d seen black PBT keycaps with nice laser engraving in the past, so the factory set out on a bit of an adventure to figure out what to do. They got black laser-engraved keycaps from a major brand which purported to be PBT. The laser-engraving was beautiful. The supplier said they used a mix of 75% PBT and 25% polycarbonate. When they tested the plastic, however, it turned out to be ABS.

The factory went through four or five different suppliers’ “laser-friendly” black PBT before they found one that worked well. They made us samples. The samples looked great and passed both alcohol-cleaning and abrasion tests. We signed off on the plastic.

The supplier swears up and down that the PBT they delivered is the exact same formula as the stuff we tested. But something is wrong.

Our factory has sourced three alternate “laser-friendly” black PBT mixes and plans to test them over the next few days. Additionally, they’re working with the previously-good supplier to get a  third bag of the custom PBT mixture to see if it was just one bad batch.

As of Thursday night, the factory still thinks they’ll be able to figure out a solution next week and get May-delivery keyboards built by the end of next week.

Rather than throw away nearly 10,000 perfectly molded black keycaps just because they can’t be laser-engraved, the factory suggested that we can use them for the unlabeled keyboards that some of you have ordered. We happily agreed.

After the keycap laser engraving issue gets resolved and manufacturing of the pilot run is complete, our Shenzhen project manager will visit the factory to do quality control and then the factory will load the run on a truck destined for our warehouse in Hong Kong. Normally, it takes 1-2 business days to get a shipment from the factory to the warehouse.  We expect it'll take a bit longer given the current climate.

Shipping

Once we're sure that the keyboards are in Hong Kong, we'll close out backer surveys for May-delivery keyboards and confer with our shipping partner about the best delivery strategy.

Right now, the international shipping climate is...somewhat volatile. As we mentioned in a prior backer update, covid-19 has led to a major decrease in international air traffic.  Almost all carriers rely on the cargo holds of these flights to ship their packages, so they’re in a tough spot right now. The carrier we'd expected to use to ship keyboards to most countries has suspended all service. Some other carriers have jacked up their rates or extended their delivery times. A number of shipments we've sent to customers with economy carriers over the past few months have taken 60+ days to arrive at their destinations instead of the normal 10-15.

Available shipping options have been changing every few days. It may well be the case that our preferred carrier is back in business in two weeks, but we may also have to get a bit creative.

A small change

During the campaign, we told you that keyboards from the pilot run and the mass production run would be identical. It looks like we're going to be making a small addition to the mass production keyboards. Details of the change are in the "August-delivery keyboards" section below, under the “stickers” heading. If you backed for a keyboard from the pilot run and would rather get a keyboard from the mass production run, email us at [email protected] and we can make the switch for you.

August-delivery keyboards

Keyswitches

If you backed for a keyboard from the regular mass production run, you need to make one important decision: which kind of switches your keyboard should come with.

If you like clicky switches like Cherry MX Blues, you will likely be happiest with BOX White switches.

If you expect to use your keyboard for gaming or steno, you’ll probably appreciate the linear BOX Red switches, which have neither an audible click nor a tactile bump.

If you want switches with a tactile bump, but without an extra “clicky” noise, BOX Browns are likely your best bet.

If you like switches with a tactile bump, without a click, and which actuate earlier in the keypress, Speed Copper switches are a great choice.

The various BOX switches feature a modern design which hides the electrical contacts in a separate compartment, giving them slightly better dust immunity than the Speed switches.

If all of that is gibberish, you can’t go wrong with the BOX Browns.  So far, they're the most popular switch selection. 

Schedule

Our factory reports that their supply chain is functioning, but that they're very, very busy right now. As it turns out, a huge spike in folks working from home all around the world has led to a big uptick in demand for mechanical keyboards.

The factory has us penciled into their production schedule and tells us that as of right now, we're comfortably on track to ship August-delivery keyboards in August.

Stickers

During the campaign, we also had a number of folks who asked us about the possibility of getting all of the alternate Fun and Upper legends printed on the keyboard.  Because of the laser engraving technique we use, any etched legends would all be a single color and the keys would end up very, very busy: that was a no-go.

Two weeks ago, one of our beta testers asked if we could instead maybe produce vinyl keycap stickers with the full set of QWERTY plus the associated Fun and Upper legends printed in color. We asked the factory and they confirmed that we should be able to produce them at a very reasonable cost. We can't promise them until we've approved the final sample, but we're going to do our best to include a set of those keycap stickers for free with each and every Keyboardio Atreus from the mass production run.

Accessories

After some tiny tweaks to aid manufacturability and durability, we're getting ready to order the "golden sample" of the palm rest from the wood supplier for approval. After we approve that sample, they'll order lumber for the mass-production order.

We've already signed off on the golden sample of the travel case. Because the lead time for the travel case is much shorter, we don't expect to place the order for those until June.

One new add-on

During the campaign, a few of you asked if it would be possible to order extra sets of keycaps. Because the QWERTY keycaps are lasered after installation on the keyboard, it's a little tricky to offer extra sets of engraved keycaps. Blank keycaps, on the other hand, turn out to be very doable.

As you complete your survey, you'll be able to add an extra set of blank, black keycaps to your order. These sets will include 42 "normal" XDA profile keycaps and two XDA profile keycaps with homing bars.

Shipping costs

As we mentioned above, international shipping is fairly chaotic right now. Prices are dramatically higher than they were when we set shipping costs during the campaign. Consequently, shipping prices for keyboards and extras on BackerKit are higher than Kickstarter pricing was, but reflect the best current prices we're able to get from carriers. At the same time, we’re subsidizing a bit of the shipping costs.

If you pledged extra on Kickstarter for additional keyboards or accessories we'll cover the difference in shipping. If things aren't adding up on BackerKit, drop us a note at [email protected] and we'll get everything straightened out.

Due to their platform limitations, BackerKit isn’t able to calculate discounted pricing for shipments of multiple add-ons. You might be able to get better shipping rates for new add-on orders from https://shop.keyboard.io

If you’d rather wait to see if global shipping rates recover, you’ll also be able to order keyboards and accessories at https://shop.keyboard.io in the future, though pricing won’t match Kickstarter pricing.

What's next

We expect to post another update toward the end of this month with a status report on May-delivery keyboards.

<3 Jesse + Kaia

Full steam ahead!
about 4 years ago – Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 01:13:42 AM

Just about 24 hours ago, the Kickstarter campaign for the Keyboardio Atreus came to a close. 2636 of you backed us to the tune of $387,909. Thank you!

What's next

On Monday, we'll start the process of placing the mass-production order with our keyboard supplier.

Over the next couple weeks, we'll send you your BackerKit surveys to let you pick your keycaps and switches. At that time, if you backed us for $1 or more, you'll be able to order additional keyboards and accessories at the Kickstarter pricing.  We're pretty sure we'll be able to offer additional blank, black keycap sets, too.

We'll keep sending out an update about once a month, giving you information on our progress, until rewards have shipped.

Missed the campaign?

If you didn't back the Kickstarter, don't despair. You can now preorder the Keyboardio Atreus at https://shop.keyboard.io. If you place an order before the end of April, the discount code "April2020" will bring the cost of a keyboard to just $15 more than the Kickstarter pricing.

<3 Jesse + Kaia

48 hours to go! (Also, the winning keyswitch and wooden keycaps)
about 4 years ago – Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 03:34:30 PM

Hi! 

We're into the home stretch of the campaign.  Tonight, we've got a couple things to announce.

And the winner is...

Last week, we invited all backers to vote on a fourth keyswitch option for the Atreus. "Brown" tactile (but not clicky) switches won in a landslide.  If you've backed us for a regular-delivery keyboard, you'll now have your choice of Speed Copper, BOX Red, Box White, or BOX Brown switches.  We'll talk more about each switch again, and why you might pick a given option, when we send out the survey.

Wooden keycaps

 After a few more days in the garage workshop, we've have good news to report about wooden keycaps.  

We can make this go.

After milling 48 wooden keycaps on the CNC, we ended up 22 workable keycaps. The rest, we lost to milling errors, wood imperfections, and sanding errors. One of them, we even lost to an unfortunate mistake with the Shopvac. 

 Hand-sanding and finishing those 22 keycaps took about four hours. 

 But the end result is pretty nifty-looking.

Kickstarter is doing something funny with image compression, so this picture looks kind of blotchy, but you can click through to see a higher-resolution version:

Making these keycaps is fairly labor-intensive. 

We've only made a couple dozen keycaps so far.

We still want to tweak the shape of the milled caps a bit.

But we love how they look and feel.

They won't be cheap.

Thursday morning, at 9AM California time, we're going to open up a new $1250 backer tier for an ultra-special-edition Atreus with walnut keycaps, walnut palm rests, and travel cases.

We're only going to be making three of them. 

<3 Jesse + Kaia