M60-A / M6-B / TH 88 Caps / New collabs / Heavy Industry / KOYU

M60-A

All M60-A enclosures have been completed and will be shipped by sea-freight to our Melbourne Warehouse. A little delay has occured due to the Mid-Autumn festival/National holiday but they will be returning in the next few days to promptly pack and prepare the shipping container for shipment. Sea-Freight will take around 2-3 weeks to arrive to our bays in Melbourne, Australia. We will then package and ship in batches of colour and country and aim to complete this over the course of a week with the help of a few hired hands.

A freshly anodised M60-A Dusk

Meanwhile our team down under (Wilba, Kate & Rama) have been programming, testing and packing the PCB’s whilst we wait for the freight shipment of the M60-A enclosures to arrive. We appreciate the patience of everyone who participated in the pre-orders and we’re excited to see these unboxed and assembled in their own unique combinations.

M60-A Manufacturing shots

During our visit to our manufacturers we where lucky enough to see some of the M60-A’s undergo the anodising process. Here are some photos of the enclosures receiving their perfect colour. The jigs are all custom made to hold the enclosures in such a way to hide the anode mark. Anodising is all about timing and craftsmanship by extremely skilled workers. Seeing the process in person really makes you appreciate the beauty of chemical reactions much more. First the M60-A goes through a number of cleaning baths to remove any contaminates which may be present on the surface, it then is placed immediately into an ultrasonic bath for a matter of minutes and directly placed into multiple colour tanks where it quickly starts to show its colour.

M6-B

M6-B is well into production. We will be receiving the XO caps from Signature Plastics shortly, the PCB’s will be complete in 2-3 weeks and the enclosures after that. We have ordered many extras to stock on our site for those who missed out.

Pas that, the new XO pins have arrived! This time we laser-cut them out of mirrored stainless steel. These are much tougher and cleaner than the first iteration.

TypeHype 88 Edition Keycap

Our limited edition Type Hype caps are starting to arrive to our international customers, very happy with how our first enamel filled keycap came out. A lucky 2 orders will also be receiving an unreleased yellow-enamel filled variant, we hope to see it on a board somewhere!

New Collabs

Introducing our latest keycap release with the latest GMK set, GMK Chocolatier. We are offering the Blue PVD coated X/O caps in Cherry Profile and a ‘Golden Ticket’ in Gold PVD! These are available through various vendors who are offering the keyset.

Heavy Industry

We finally launched the Heavy Industry keyset to be paired with our latest offerings, the KOYU and M60 keyboards. Check it out through the link below! It is also suited for other products on the market and can be accented with the yellow or more subtle without.

https://rama.works/pbt-heavy-industry/

KOYU

New renders have been uploaded to their respective KOYU pages to show the colours of the board in its various colours.

In other news!

We’re on Apple News! If you own an iOS device subscribe to the “Rama Works” news channel and follow these updates from there also.

M60-A Cables / KOYU Announcement / BOX Royal / Wear

M60-A Cables

The new USB A > C cables have arrived, 1.5m long in black braided with metal ends, laser etched.

Three of the six colours have been all anodized as of last week and we anticipate all colours to be finished properly. We will be arriving to our manufacturer next week for a final QC of all the boards before they’re shipped to home base!  Please note that we’ll be away from the office until the 11th of September and slower to reply to all support inquiries, but will do our best to answer as promptly as we can.

KOYU Announcement

We are incredibly excited to announce our latest offering, the KOYU 65% Keyboard.   It’s an inspiration and evolution of our previous offerings, but entirely new in its own way - we’ve taken all the great aspects of the M60-A and integrated it into the KOYU. 

Integrated 4.5MM plate, In-Switch RGB, hotsockets, fixed layout, optional internal weight (same weight as M60-A / interchangeable). Launching mid-September.

BOX Royal Switches - Re-tooled

The replacement BOX Royal Re-tooled switches have arrived and we are promptly having them packed, along with the GMK Stabilisers. 

Wear

U80 SEQ 1 PCB / M6-B Proto / Lumen Proto

U80 Prototype PCB

A lot of people have been waiting for an update on this project, along with us! Finally received in the prototype PCB's today. Will be doing fit testing this week so then we can move quickly with the vendor to getting the product to a production-ready state. Here are some pics of the prototype PCB & Enclosure.

M6-B Proto

LEDs in action! Rainbow mode. Completely programmable via QMK and can be used to indicate a miriad of things.

The M6-B is on it's final week for pre-order, get one now before it's too late:

Lumen (Utility) Light Prototype

A few weeks ago, we teased a concept image of a product we are working on without revealing what it is. The Lumen is an RGBW utility light controllable via HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value/Brightness), the interface consists of two dials which can be clicked in to control different parameters, Hue / Saturation, Hue / Brightness, Pulse Rate / Speed etc. 

Today Wilba (our Hardware Engineer) brought over the prototype test-board to play with and we are now confident we can miniaturize it and create a neat product from it.

A lot of people have noticed the deskmat we have in the background of a lot of these images, we have stock arriving at our warehouses in the following weeks, expect something soon!

It's named the Canvas and it's perfectly ratio'd to compliment 60% sized keyboards.

M60-A SEQ 4 / M6-B / WAVE SEQ 2

Hey all! Apologies for the late update, been meaning to post one for a while but caught up in accounting, unfortunately, always the things you don't want to do. But back to what we love now!

M60-A PCB's

All the m60-A PCB's are in as of last week. Currently unboxing them all and sending them in batches to our in-house Hardware Engineer Wilba to program and test over the next few weeks.

They will then all be packaged and warehoused until the enclosures arrive.

M60-A Enclosures

All M60-A enclosures are all machined and currently undergoing Anodising by colour batch. A few colours have already been completed. All PVD coating and hand-mirror polishing have been complete on the brass components. We estimate all enclosures to finish around early September - and we will be visiting our suppliers to do a final QC before they are forwarded to our warehouse for final assembly and packaging. We will be away for a week and a half from the first week of September and reachable via our contact support email: support@rama.works. Sea-Freight should take roughly 2 weeks and we will promptly pack each order in batches of Country, Colour and Contents. 

All stainless steel fasteners and black hex screws are in and we are also creating a manual on how to assemble the M60-A. Here is an artwork we commissioned by the very talented Janne Iivonen which will be used as the front cover for the manual, it shows the diversity and playfulness we strive for within our products and customers.

We are looking forward to shipping these out and seeing them customised in their own unique ways by the new owners!

M6-B

M6-B with the TH 88 edition keycaps (currently in production)

Excited to launch the new variation of the M6-B, it includes all the great features of the previous revision but now with RGB lighting! The PCB is also backwards compatible with any existing M6 enclosure.

Check out the prototype PCB from Wilba here: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bmm5NV4DYpz/

It's available for pre-order now at:

WAVE SEQ 2

The new variation on the coveted wave keycap series. Available for preorder now alongside the M6-B.

In other news

The 'Project Updates' blog is now 'Proto(Type)'  It is what identifies us across our spectrum and excites,  mesmerizes and captivates our audiences. It's us on a page. More to come. 

M60-A SEQ 3

A big pallet arrived today at the Rama Works warehouse and it's the production packaging for the M60-A accessories - these are for the Interior Weight, Back Weight and PCB. Looking forward to packaging these all together and shipping them out in the following months!

M60-A PCB

Interior Weight

Back Weight

EXTRA

Always enjoyable to take apart and hold the parts which make up the M60-A keyboard, excited for those who participated in the preorder to experience unpacking and assembling this keyboard! Also go check the M60-A box here: https://rama.works/projectupdates/2018/6/11/m60-a-packaging

Other updates

Have also for the past two weeks been testing ZFrontiers new profile keyset, the KAT profile. It's a very ergonomic and a very comfortable set to type on and we're looking forward to potentially releasing a set with this profile. More information on this keyset can be found here: https://www.zfrontier.com/post/detail/7625

M60-A SEQ 2 + EPBT HEAVY INDUSTRY

Apologies all for the lack of updates/social media for the past week or so - we have been away from the office. We are now back and cannot wait to get straight back into it! 

Productive mail day here at the Rama Works Workshop. We've received a number of items which come with the M60-A. 

We are working hard here to not only deliver a product, but an experience. This delves deep into our company tagline "Experience Design". We cannot wait to show our customers what we work on in the background and some of the inclusions that come with our products.

Here's a few of them:

Custom feet

We had the mould for the feet completely remade to provide more grip. These come packaged in a pack of two and are in Kuro black.

U1 Connector cable

This is the cable which connects the U1-C daughterboard and the M60-A PCB together, we added extra sleeving to keep it together - we have the entire quantity in stock now.

PCB Anti-Static Bag

Our M60-A Anti-Static bags have arrived, these will keep the PCB's safe during handling and transport. This also comes packaged in another box (which has yet to arrive, stay tuned)

Not shown: 
GMK Stabilisers
NovelKeys Box Royals

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EPBT Heavy Industry preview!

We’re proud to announce the newest collaboration in our partnership line. We have been working with enjoyPBT and are proud to create EPBT Heavy Industry, a cherry profile keycap, tailored with our signature typeface and the resilient, printed caps and stems enjoyPBT are known for. PBT creates a much softer typing acoustic when compared to ABS and is a perfect match for our M60-A keyboard. It will also come at a discount to our M60-A owners. More news to come! (Also, what’s that keyboard resting on?)

EDIT: Here's a more color accurate photo:

M60-A SEQ 1

M60-A base unit sample packaging has arrived, this will be accompanied by other packaging which will house the PCB, Internal Weight & Back Weight extras.

Video:

Will post pictures of the other packaging when it arrives!