Hey folks, just a quick update here for proof of life
For some context, our machinist sped up the CNC program for Modern M0110 when he did the actual production run, and while all the tops machining is pretty fantastic (honestly this is where a huge chunk of our machining budget went since you're basically paying by the minute), the bottoms came out rougher than the original prototype and my machinist will not do another pass, but at the time I thought that the level of machine marks was normal and would easily come out in sandblasting.
That turned out to be not true...and when I gave the order to my Cerakote vendor to start running the non-engraved keyboards, he basically halted after the first one because the machining marks were way too rough on the bottom and I don't want to ship them to you guys in that state. So me and my wife have been working with our Cerakote and anodizing vendor to experiment with different surface prep strategies so we ship out keyboards that live up to your expectations because lets be honest, even if it looks amazing on top and sitting on your desk, I know many of you are not going to be satisfied if the part you *can't* see isn't perfect too.
So the main updates are:
- We have anodized production samples! They actually look *amazing* and I'll try to share good photos when I have a chance to photograph them properly. The gray is going to come out with a bit more of a textured finish while the silver will come out as an ultra-smooth Apple-like finish. I'm actually really impressed with the quality and was surprised you could get such high quality anodizing done in the good ol USA (anodizing companies are a bit of a dying breed here due to environmental regulations)
- My Cerakote vendor's spray gun broke last week and he had to get a new one, so he has to redo the production sample--our proposed solution right now is to actually paint each keyboard twice so the first coat helps smooth out the surface of the bottom and second coat is the one you see. It's a bit more expensive but I hope that this will look good but I don't have 100% confirmation on it yet. The two coats will be evenly applied on both bottom and top so we don't expect to see any color inconsistencies but this is definitely something we will be monitoring once we get to real production.
Thanks everyone!