Project Updates

Project Updates (Sept. 25, 2018)

Ongoing Projects

Keycaps:

GMK Monochrome & RAMA Black Artisans

Group buy stage.

GMK Mr. Sleeves

Group buy closed. MOQ reached. Waiting for instructions from Novelkeys to proceed.

GMK Metaverse

Orders/numbers submitted to GMK. Some kits are a bit shy of MOQ. Working with donutcat and GMK to make them happen.

GMK Modern Dolch & RAMA Dolch Artisans

Successful. 500 MOQ unlocked for Base kit, $10 refund for Base kit shall go out soon.

GMK Greek Olivetti

Group buy failed. Refunds going out soon.

GMK TA 90

Orders/numbers submitted to GMK. Some kits are a bit shy of MOQ. Working with GMK to make them all happen.

GMK Olivia

Color matching approved few weeks back. Currently under production. Do expect a heavy delay.

GMK Necro

Still under the process of color mixing and match as per Originative. Do expect a heavy delay.

GMK Burgundy

Base kits arrived at our facility in Shanghai. Other child kits yet to arrive. Will ship them out once they are all here. ETA: mid Oct.

GMK Phantom

Under production, do expect slight delay.

GMK >Terminal_ R2

Under production. On schedule.

SA Bubble

Order placed. Shipping ETA from SP: July, 19th, 2019. Do expect to be able to ship them out mid August to early Sept next year.

KAM Starry Night

Further delayed to October according to Keyreative.

DSA Milkshake

Blank keycaps ready. Will do color sampling and matching again soon, aiming to make purple and blue closer to the original design.

KAT Alpha

Under production. On Schedule.

XDA Oblique

Order submitted late :( Will catch up on production. Do expect a slight delay.

JTK Hana

Under production. Slightly delayed due to Buddha getting married recently.

Red Comet

Order submitted late. Do expect a slight delay.

Keyboards:

Fr87 by Elemento

Heavily delayed. Expecting to ship out in Oct. I will extend this topic in the very end of this update list.

ALF X3 by ALF

Expect to ship in Oct.

F & T 1916 by F & T

Under production. On schedule.

Orange 75 and Orange Pad by Fox Lab

98% of orders are shipped. Few GB participants have yet to pay the shipping invoice nor have we heard from them. Please contact us as soon as possible if you are still waiting on your Oranges to arrive.

Leaf 80 by Fox Lab

Under production. On schedule.

Meteor by EVE

Under production. Do expect a slight delay.

Grid600 by grid
Order submitted. On schedule.

Up-and-Coming

Keycaps:

JTK Artic (very soon)
JTK HF (?)
GMK Coniferous R2 from donutcat (very soon)
GMK Chocolatier from Zambumon (very soon)
SA VoC from Novelkeys (very soon)
SA Raccoon

Keyboards:

KIRA TKL and KIRA S by Thesiscamper (very soon)
HB-85 by Gray Studio

In Development...

Keycaps:

KAM Inu
KAM Wraith
KAM Imperator
KAT Poseidon
Multiple awesome projects with TheKey.Company
Possible DCS set
JTK keycaps (hint: 3)
...

Keyboards:

a 70% keyboard (Aluminum housing, front RGB ambient strip, )
A planck board with Maarten
...

On Fr87 by Elemento

First off, a detailed update:

Keyboard housing and accessories:

Metal parts: All milled and finished anodizing in late Aug to early Sept. After inspecting, Some gray parts were around 1-2 pantone code darker, got them back for re-anodizing to match the original gray advertised.

Plastic parts: All milled and done in late Aug, early Sept. Battery chamber, done, CNCed ABS, sprayed black, perfectly textured. Plastic Washer, done, sits between the on/off metal switch and the battery chamber. However, after pre-assembling we discovered that the tolerance was a bit off, rendering the switch wobble more than we could accept. Hence, these two are now being machined again..

Wood Piece: Done.

Package: Done this week.

PCB:
PCB is the most frustrating part. It has not been a pleasant journey working with the current PCB vendor. They promised to deliver in late June and early July. But there are always some minor issues from the post production units that didn't meet our standard.

Revision 1 was the one in the early prototype: in-switch RGB, RGB Strip, USB Type-C, BT, fixed layout. R2 changed the PCB to mother and daughter board to incorporate better with the internal design, changed the side RGB strip configuration, and added multiple layout support. R3 added charging circuit and DIP. Revision 4 fixed some issues detected when testing and has recently been approved. Phase 1 to Phase 2 was a drastic change: tray mount to top mount, 1 PCB to 1 mother and 3 daughter boards (2 high-density SMD LED strip, 1 Type-C port), fixed layout to flexible layout while incorporating in switch SMD. Slowly adding more features to the PCB thus generated many unwanted issue.

BT 3.0 + BLE connection, 4-5m connection (full metal housing, full plate). Delay, not an issue (surely there will be delay, but not noticeable when work and casual gaming) (noticeable delay might occur when you pair many BT devices to a single machine). Could easily switch between (Windows, MAC, iOS) machines via Fn + function short cuts.

That being said, we bear full responsibility for the lack of communication and overall unsatisfactory group buy experience:

Problems we had during this group buy with the designer and factories:
- Miscommunication. Three parties are involved: Elemento, PCB vendor, and zFrontier. Communication were often times unilateral. Demands and feedback weren't clearly delivered.
- Lack of supervision over the production process. Happens when working with larger factories: smaller projects were postponed and bigger projects were prioritized when project managers were not in the place of constantly overseeing the production phase.
- Not taking immediate action when the factory failed to deliver. We put our trust into the said PCB vendor, but they were not able to deliver on time and created more issues. They are competent, in fact. But their attitude towards the project wasn't quite in the right place. We didn't take immediate action to push them or switch vendor, believing they could still make it right. Fact is, yes, they did, but too much time were wasted.

We sincerely apologize for our poor service for this project.

Elemento and zFrontier are pushing the factories to deliver every single day.

What to expect:

Fr87 by Elemento
Shipping ETA: October

Regular update on every project available on this page