GRID Caps arrived / HI SEQ2 Shipped / WEAR / M60-A SEQ2

GRID Keycaps have arrived!

We’ve taken delivery of all our injection moulded, polycarbonate, GRID keycaps in all their beautiful colours. We’ll be packing these over the week after we ship the Tray/Inventory 2 Brass PVD orders. We’ll then start shipping out the GRID orders.

Heavy Industry SEQ2

Most orders of our PBT keyset is now complete, we’re looking forward to seeing them on some great setups!
The next round of our Heavy Industry PBT Keycap set is now available for preorder alongside the M65-B.

WEAR Production

Our apparel is now in production, any extra stock from our production run is currently available on our store in limited quantities! All units are custom made and are not re-branded existing stock.

M60-A SEQ2

The M60-A SEQ2 units have been completed for some time now, since early October. We’ve had some delays with the logistics in getting the units here, but we’re in the final stretch with clearing some documentation in getting our container here, so we have no issues when it lands in port. We hope that it will land in 2-3 weeks. Everything in our warehouse is packed and ready to go for when they arrive so we can get all the units out as quickly as possible. All units will be receiving our XO Switchpullers as well.

M6-C, M60-A SEQ2, GRID CAPS, U80-A, Inventory 2 SEQ2, Tray

M6-C

The M6-C enclosures have arrived, we have everything in stock except for the GRID caps & the M6-C Silicone bases. We expect these to all arrive this month though! Then all units will be shipped out if everything in the order is in stock.

We have approved the latest batch of M6-C bases for production; several improvements were made since the initial design. On the left is the first production sample, but given the density of the material, it would cave in too much, so we made some adjustments so that it sits more flush around the PCB.

GRID Keycaps

We’ve received the production polycarbonate colour samples of the GRID keycaps and have begun production on them! We’re looking forward to seeing these on keyboards and shipping them with our M6-C units.

PRODUCTION IS DUE TO COMPLETE BY 1st OF NOVEMBER

We have limited extra stock allocations from manufacturing available through our webstore.

Inventory 2

Inventory 2 Aluminium & Titanium have arrived and will be packed early next week for immediate shipping - the brass units will be sent to us early next week to receive before next weekend.

Tray

As with the Inventory, we’ve received the Aluminium trays in our warehouse and expect the brass ones to arrive early next week. They will be assembled with the silicone feet then packaged for shipping!

U80-A Production

The U80 production is well underway! All the plates have been completed and have been mirror-polished and are now in PVD coating. A majority of the brass underweights have been machined and are off to mirror-polishing. The bases have mostly been completed - machining will soon begin for the top housings. We will also soon start production on the PCB’s.

M60-A SEQ2

The M60-A SEQ2’s are all complete! We are waiting for the ZEIT editions to complete before they’re all sea-freighted to our warehouse for final packing and shipping! That is expected to be this upcoming week.

GRID Keycaps

Production Ready

Our latest round of samples has arrived from the updated mould. We have made several improvements from the original tooling. This includes:

• Removing the ejection pins

• Removing the sprue from the underside of the cap

• increasing the grit of the underside finish

We will soon receive the colour samples of each variation. Once that's approved we can promptly begin production.

These keycaps are moulded in Polycarbonate and hold exceptional colour. We will be offering custom colours of the GRID keycap in the future.

Switchpuller XO

The Switchpuller’s have shipped to the Vendors who are stocking them. We are also shipping the orders placed through our webstore.

M6-C / WEAR

M6-C Bases

Our first tool samples of the base of the M6-C has arrived and we have put through the production order, we can expect these to be ready by early October.

WEAR

Our long-awaited WEAR items are now available in a variety of colourways! Including the new WEAR PVD BRASS Bracelet.

Packaging

New mailing bags!

KOYU Shipping Timeline / M60-A Production / U80-A Buying Guide / RW LP A GRID SET

KOYU Shipping Timeline

The KOYU’s are en-route to our warehouse and we anticipate them to land at our warehouse in early July, we’ll then be packing and shipping the KOYU’s in batches and anticipate them to be shipped through mid-to-late July.

If you are holding out for an extra unit, please sign-up to the waiting list here:
https://rama.link/koyulist

M60-A SEQ 2 Production

The Aluminium enclosures for the M60-A SEQ2 have all finished machining and are onto polishing and surface treatment now. The Brass & Aluminium backweights are still in machining and we expect them to be completed soon. We anticipate that the M60-A SEQ2 units will be completed by August.

Did you know each M60-A takes 10 hours to machine? This is just the top and bottom enclosure, not including the back piece. It’s then further polished, cleaned and anodised (or PVD coated)!

U80-A Buying Guide

Confused about what to order or what you will need to build a complete RW U80-A keyboard? We’ve created a guide to try and help out and show where you can purchase some of the components to make the keyboard your own! We also have a few other guides on how to adjust and make the typing experience for your keyboard unique.

RW LP A - GRID SET - PRODUCTION

Our first tool samples are set to arrive in the next few days for the GRID keycaps we have created, suited for ortholinear boards. We have also extended the pre-order for the M6-C / Inventory 2 & GRID caps to finish alongside the U80-A pre-order on July 10th, 2019.

KOYU Production / M60-A SEQ2 Production / RW LP Keycaps / U80-A

KOYU Production Updates

All Aluminium variants of the KOYU have been completed and are now going through final inspection and packaging.

KOYU TANK EDITIONS

Raw brass is very susceptible to scratches and resulted in a high-scratch rate during the PVD plating. It’s a challenging process when dealing with a mirror-finish as it’s unforgiving, making the surface untouchable while mounting the fixtures. All units which do not pass are then re-finished and then sent for re-plating, we’re doing this at a rate of several a day and should be complete this week. See below the beautiful mirror-polished, raw brass KOYU.

Here is how the KOYU TANK looks after being PVD plated. It is inconceivably heavy, I hope all that were lucky enough to secure one make some stability upgrades to their desks!

TANK upgrades!

We’ve added an oil coating to the base of the TANK editions. Bead-blasted PVD is incredibly absorbent to any oils, making it a fingerprint magnet. We’ve added an oil finish to the brass base to make it less-porous and not attract fingerprints which results in a much cleaner finish. It also made the colour darker than normal which matches more nicely with the top enclosure.

Extras

We will have extras of the KOYU available around JULY. This will include TANK editions. Time/Date for the extras will be posted to our social media and mailing list: https://rama.link/mail

M60-A Production updates

The M60-A SEQ2’s are well into the machining process, there are a significant number of units to go through with many machining operations. This is the longest process in the production chain.

RW LP Keycaps

We’ve begun production on the mould for our new Low-Profile keycaps. We’ve made these available in 9 different colour options and in a set of 60x1U + 2x2U so that they can be used on various ortholinear boards. They will be moulded from Polycarbonate for its exceptional optical clarity when creating our ICED variation of the cap (PC allows up to 90% of light transmission). The keycap has a polished finish on the outer surfaces for a retro look/feel, and the inside of the cap has a frosted finish to help disperse light when used with LEDs and the ICED cap. The first tool samples should be ready by Mid-June. You can pre-order them now at: https://rama.link/rwlp

U80-A

The U80-A will be launching before the end of May. We have already started prototyping and commenced production on parts of the assembly. Our custom fasteners & spacers for the countersunk screws in the plate and MUTE mount have been produced in mass and received in our warehouse. The custom feet have also been produced in mass. The MUTE mount and U80-A enclosure prototype are in production and should be received in JUNE. The prototype PCB’s have also arrived and are being evaluated.

The U80-A will launch on the 31st of May at 8.00 PM (EST) at $420 USD

Instrument Low-Profile / Stab SEQ 2

INSTRUMENT

A lot have asked on the status of the Instrument board. Over the past couple of months, we made developments on creating a low profile keyboard with our custom-moulded keycaps.

The initially designed keycap was for the Kailh Low-Profile switch - however after initial testing with 2U caps we found that it was not suitable and halted the project. We had an entire set of 1U and 2U keys prototyped for testing.

A lot of work was done in creating a complete package, below is the PCB designed by our Hardware Engineer, Wilba.

A new solution

After being in contact with Cherry we where able to procure one of the first samples of the Cherry MX Low Profile mechanical switch. The design of this switch has some major advantages over the Kailh switches we initially selected. It has a light-pipe which was designed specifically for SMD RGB LED's, the stem is much more stabilised which can handle 2U keys on its own and the switch supports normal MX keys (unlike the Kailh which is a proprietary stem)

What's next?

The low-profile switches haven't been released yet, but we're waiting on a prototype order of more units so that we can begin testing. The PCB will also be redesigned with the footprint for the Cherry MX Low Profile switch.

Stab

The design for our new stabiliser is complete and will begin the second round of prototying. We have added in the threaded-insert and adjusted some of the model dimensions. The base of the stabiliser is 'pre-clipped' and has a small landing pad to reduce 'bottoming out' noise. The current proposal is to produce the stabiliser out of POM due to its low coefficient of friction.