Topre sliders, MX caps

[Rewind]

I'll install a couple of sliders this weekend and if I can get a hold of my AV buddy I'll be able to record a video of it.

Otherwise I could record a video with my iPhone but I'm worried the quality will be crap.

[exitfire401]

I'll install a couple of sliders this weekend and if I can get a hold of my AV buddy I'll be able to record a video of it.

Otherwise I could record a video with my iPhone but I'm worried the quality will be crap.

Just make one. Then we have one to show for reference. I'd make one, but I don't have an hhkb yet

[SSIPAK]

any updates on mass producing these?

[dustinhxc]

Okie doke.. With the site being down tonight it gave me motivation to put my sliders in finally!!!!! I used 6 strong & flexible. 5 Purple, 1 Pink. I had to sand them around the middle cylinder and the sides of the legs. Also I put krytox lube on the legs and in the slider housing 2 grooves for each. They feel great since the spring and dome does most the work anyways. I just need to find the right profile keys now.. At the moment Im using my Cherry Profile from my Cyrillic set. But here are some fun shots I did to try them, potato shots!! >.<









 

Stoked to find some grey 1.25 that fit good... 

[CommonCurt]

Okie doke.. With the site being down tonight it gave me motivation to put my sliders in finally!!!!! I used 6 strong & flexible. 5 Purple, 1 Pink. I had to sand them around the middle cylinder and the sides of the legs. Also I put krytox lube on the legs and in the slider housing 2 grooves for each. They feel great since the spring and dome does most the work anyways. I just need to find the right profile keys now.. At the moment Im using my Cherry Profile from my Cyrillic set. But here are some fun shots I did to try them, potato shots!! >.<

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Stoked to find some grey 1.25 that fit good... 

That's awesome 

Hopefully I can get a FC660C pretty soon.  You should make some videos on how to put these in.

[dustinhxc]

Okie doke.. With the site being down tonight it gave me motivation to put my sliders in finally!!!!! I used 6 strong & flexible. 5 Purple, 1 Pink. I had to sand them around the middle cylinder and the sides of the legs. Also I put krytox lube on the legs and in the slider housing 2 grooves for each. They feel great since the spring and dome does most the work anyways. I just need to find the right profile keys now.. At the moment Im using my Cherry Profile from my Cyrillic set. But here are some fun shots I did to try them, potato shots!! >.<

Show Image

Show Image

Show Image

Show Image

 

Stoked to find some grey 1.25 that fit good... 

That's awesome 

Hopefully I can get a FC660C pretty soon.  You should make some videos on how to put these in.

Thank You! Only downfall is they sit a tad higher. If the spacebar was swappable Id do my arrows and spacebar so the entire row 1 was the same height. Oh well! Looks great besides that.

[Matt3o]

Thank You! Only downfall is they sit a tad higher. If the spacebar was swappable Id do my arrows and spacebar so the entire row 1 was the same height. Oh well! Looks great besides that.

do you feel they are too high? I didn't want the caps to hit the housing, otherwise you'd need an o-ring I guess

[dustinhxc]

Thank You! Only downfall is they sit a tad higher. If the spacebar was swappable Id do my arrows and spacebar so the entire row 1 was the same height. Oh well! Looks great besides that.

do you feel they are too high? I didn't want the caps to hit the housing, otherwise you'd need an o-ring I guess

Well Ill be honest. The MX height is perfect! But the Topre height is lower. So they just dont match is all. I could swap all to mx haha... If I could just do the spacebar the bottom row would look perfect. Any idea how to do mx spacebar? Thanks.



Added Hyperfuse R1 Mods.

[exitfire401]

hate to be a pest, but was just wondering if there are any new updates =)

[Matt3o]

I tried contacting some manufactures with no success.

I'll be checking with bunny today, a while back he told me he maybe can produce them in China.

[exitfire401]

I tried contacting some manufactures with no success.

I'll be checking with bunny today, a while back he told me he maybe can produce them in China.

Sounds good! Saw that on the first page and wondered if anything came of that. Thanks for the update!

[HPE1000]

Maybe I missed it, but do thick cherry/gmk keycaps fit on topre boards using these? I am just wondering why topre keycaps seem to be pretty thin in comparison.

[Matt3o]

yeah they would fit. any mx cap fits

[Photekq]

I would love to see these made in high quantities. Might finally force me to get a 86 realforce.

[exitfire401]

Welp, just purchased two of them. Time to finally tear apart the RF and silence/lube it haha.

[Matt3o]

we are trying to work this out

[HPE1000]

yeah they would fit. any mx cap fits

Awesome, thank you 

[taylordcraig]

would love to know when you produce these.

[Matt3o]

I'm in talk with various manufacturers. Best quote so far was approx 0.50 per slider but I had to produce quite a lot of them. I'm now talking with bunnylake. stay tuned I didn't throw the towel

[Michael]

Dayum..... .50 per piece


There's gotta be a cheaper way.

[Matt3o]

yeah the problem is that to lower the price to say 0.10 or less I have to produce at least 20k sliders

anyway I sent another quote request.

[HPE1000]

Hmm, I don't think .50 each is a terrible price honestly. That is about the cost of clear switch tops and those are much less useful

[i3oilermaker]

Matt your forgetting that vendors like myself would help get numbers up towards 20,000

[acantha]

getting to 20k doesn't honestly seem like it would be completely impossible. the average order would be around 100?  thats 200 orders. i wonder how many of the hhkb/topre fanatics on the board would cough up. given the demand for topre keycaps in the classifieds, seems like theres a market.

[MythicalWagyu]

yeah the problem is that to lower the price to say 0.10 or less I have to produce at least 20k sliders

anyway I sent another quote request.

Like others have said, that actually doesn't sound *too* impossible if you could get a group buy going with several vendors/resellers throwing in their support; 250 orders to cover an 87 key layout puts you at 21,750 sliders... or 303 orders for a 66 key layout (FC660C). I know I would buy at least 2 sets...

[SpAmRaY]

getting to 20k doesn't honestly seem like it would be completely impossible. the average order would be around 100?  thats 200 orders. i wonder how many of the hhkb/topre fanatics on the board would cough up. given the demand for topre keycaps in the classifieds, seems like theres a market.

^^ This someone's bound to do it eventually why not a bunch of geekhackers....then we can be like....'inb4 china'

[exitfire401]

getting to 20k doesn't honestly seem like it would be completely impossible. the average order would be around 100?  thats 200 orders. i wonder how many of the hhkb/topre fanatics on the board would cough up. given the demand for topre keycaps in the classifieds, seems like theres a market.

Yup, I'd be ordering 300 just for the board I have now and to insure that I'd have them for future projects.

[Matt3o]

ok, hold on just a sec. we are talking about the 1u slider here.

for a complete keyboard you need the modifiers as well.

anyway one step at the time

[MythicalWagyu]

ok, hold on just a sec. we are talking about the 1u slider here.

for a complete keyboard you need the modifiers as well.

anyway one step at the time

Those darn modifiers! What's the diff with them anyway? Smaller sliders?

[exitfire401]

ok, hold on just a sec. we are talking about the 1u slider here.

for a complete keyboard you need the modifiers as well.

anyway one step at the time

Well, still, I'd be ordering the same amount. Thought we were including sliders in this conversation haha. Oh well.

[acantha]

ok, hold on just a sec. we are talking about the 1u slider here.

i hadn't even considered that. are there different sliders for other keys? i know some of the mods would just need more than 1, which actually would make it more likely we'd hit 20k.

[taylordcraig]

i don't know anything about the mechanics of the topre switch but you're only missing out on 17 keys w/o 1u.
even on the 87 its 14 or 15 [im bad at counting] that's still 73 per keyboard.
273 orders.
and how many people would buy extras or for multiple keyboards?
but truly I guess you would be able to market it much easier if you could do a full board.
anyway great work matt.
im so excited for granite and everything else!

[Matt3o]

while 1u sliders can easily reach high tiers, it's more difficult with the stabilized keys. the proportion is 70:1 (give or take), so the stabs would be pretty expensive. That being said, if a complete set costs half of a novatouch I'm still in

[Matt3o]

In the meantime I designed a new slider

https://www.shapeways.com/model/1990125/topre-to-mx-slider-v2-0beta.html?li=my-models&materialId=61

this should be a perfect fit. Now I'll try to place 10-20 sliders together to see if that helps with pricing

[taylordcraig]

while 1u sliders can easily reach high tiers, it's more difficult with the stabilized keys. the proportion is 70:1 (give or take), so the stabs would be pretty expensive. That being said, if a complete set costs half of a novatouch I'm still in

Hell even if it cost 2/3 I'd probably be in.
I don't want to be limited to a specific keyboard,
I've already found a few that I like.

[dook0]

Wow wow wow....
For 0.10 per slider, i want 500 of them !
This thing could help me build my dream keyboard   

[EvilHMB]

How are you making these now? They look like really nicely 3d printed parts, but they could also be a mold....

They are 3D printed in what Shapeways call Ultra Frosted Detail I believe.

Wow, they look REALLY good. I just must be used to 3d printers with really low resolution/prototype speeds.

aka FDM printers. There are better technologies and brands out there

Sadly, in order to make these truly affordable molds will have to be made. The upside is that the fixed costs in the mold can be spread on what I assume could be hundreds of sets á 100pcs/set. Cooler Master won't be very happy though.

LOL GG novatouch. next level mage right here.

[sakai4eva]

I don't know how much would it take to reach 20k, but I'd be down for 104 at least, and I know some people in Malaysia would be good for a few more hundred.

[Huggy_Bear64]

I seriously need some of these. Like a full set. Hurry up and start large-scale manufacturing kthx.

[Eszett]

20k is not that much actually, I propose you bring the freaks from kbmania.com in.

[TacticalCoder]

I'd be in for something like 130 pieces, even if it's 0.50 per piece.

[paulen]

Any news?

[Matt3o]

I haven't found a manufacturer.

Anyway I will be rebuilding the model with few optimizations in STL format (what the manufacturers usually need). SP seemed interested but couldn't work with the file I sent them.

[sakai4eva]

I'm behind you 104% on this project.

[Oobly]

I believe the Novatouch is finally in production... May be a while before they start hitting shelves yet, though.

[Zentaaa]

I believe the Novatouch is finally in production... May be a while before they start hitting shelves yet, though.

The novatouch will never have the build quality of something such as a hhkb or a realforce, But mx caps on topre sliders is insane!

[Grim Fandango]

How have I not seen this thread before. This is awesome.

If it ever gets made I will of course deeply regret all of the MX keycaps that I have sold when I made the switch to Topre...

[HPE1000]

I believe the Novatouch is finally in production... May be a while before they start hitting shelves yet, though.

The novatouch will never have the build quality of something such as a hhkb or a realforce, But mx caps on topre sliders is insane!

Why is that? Have you tried a novatouch to compare?

[Zentaaa]

I believe the Novatouch is finally in production... May be a while before they start hitting shelves yet, though.

The novatouch will never have the build quality of something such as a hhkb or a realforce, But mx caps on topre sliders is insane!

Why is that? Have you tried a novatouch to compare?

No because its cooler master!

[byker]

I would love at least 100 of these, likely more!