[GB] bully - a base-kit compatible 40% keyboard | some units shipping now!

[zhol]

"where i'm from, bullies get bullied"

bully is a 40% keyboard designed by phoenix and I of mkh studio. Its 13.5u WK layout is designed to be physically and row-compatible with base keycap sets that are missing minimal 40% keyboard support ("3-key"). Inspired by many great and odd boards I have loved or longed for, it has a comfortably low typing angle of 4.0 degrees, modest design sensibilities, and the pleasant vibes of a firm plateless mount. It is also inspired by me buying a bunch of keysets that don't have 40's support built into them. We hope you like it.

vendors
coffee break keyboards
price: $199.99 USD

Preorders are live from January 13th 9:00 AM PST on cbkbd, with unlimited preorder slots until January 30th, at which point the manufacturing orders will be placed, and a few limited pre-order slots will remain. You can expect this to fulfill by Late Q1/Early Q2 2023. Updates will be provided here, but if you want to see less serious updates, you can get the bully role and join #bully over in the 40% Keyboards discord.

spec

pcb tadpole mount

More

4 degree typing angle
22.4mm ekh (explanation)
8mm/3mm bezels
aluminium case featuring alignment keys and a recessed USB port
1.6mm FR4 PCB, with APM32F072 MCU, compatible with QMK/VIAL (QMK PR)
C3 Unified Daughterboard
KLE


kit contents
1x PCB
1x JST-SH cable, 50mm
1x daughterboard
10x 50A durometer Geonworks Tadpoles
10x 70A durometer Geonworks Tadpoles
A top and bottom case
some SKUF feet
0x plate

PCB edge cuts and plate files will be provided publicly (linked in this thread, my Github, this site, and the #bully channel in the 40% discord) later.

The top and bottom case colors are available in:
Silver/clear
Black (as seen on Qull)
Lilac (ano sample)
Blue (ano sample)

photos
(note: anodization on this unit is from the proto manufacturer, and may differ from production sets)
more photos


renders

sound tests

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thanks

• phoenix, the engine for this project, who never found a request/demand he couldn't respond "ez" to
• kokaloo for the fantastic photos and also picking me up from the airport and treating me to his hotel's continental breakfast
• render genius sax, not only for these renders, but the ones you've done before, even if you don't remember doing them
• design works labs industries studio, for the extremely helpful DFM advice
• dom, egg, elia, gggggg, matt, milo, panda, pizza, waffle, and vintr, for keeping my spirits up through this boards messy genesis
• alas and bears for the hail mary support and putting up with the weird way I wanted to do things
• the goons of mkh studio

updates

• case: sent over for re-finishing at p3dstore.com
• pcb/db: arrived at cbkbd
• feet: arrived at cbkbd
• screws: arrived at cbkbd
• tadpoles: arrived at cbkbd
• jst cables: arrived at cbkbd

More

1.16.2023: MOQ passed
1.18.2023: plan is to close orders after CNY and place manufacturing order at that time. finalizing silkscreen.
1.27.2023: clarify on when unlimited preorders are closed, and specify date that manufacturing orders will be placed.
2.5.2023: "putting in orders for all the bits and bobs right now, all quantities are finalized and there is now a limited number of units on the listing"
2.24.2023: tadpoles have arrived, screws have shipped, pcb, db, & case are all in production right now (with cases expected to ship from manu late Feb/early March, JST cables quoted, feet sourced
3.7.2023: case in anodizing
3.10.2023: pcb in assembly
3.11.2023: db's on the way, feet for delivery
3.28.2023: case needs re-finishing. it's being sent over to Jake of p3dstore.com for koting
4.12.2023: purple and silver matched. blue and black matches are finalizing.
4.20.2023: koting starts
5.12.2023: posted hhkb top file to git

[MIGHTY CHICKEN]

where no thock mount glwic

[ESJvR]

reserved.

[white_rabbit]

This has good energy.

[stidal]

where i'm from, bullies who bully bullies get bullied. i love bully

[PizzaForce]

Wow, really fantastic. I love it. Just one thing? Could this maybe have USB hub capability incorporated? That's easy right?

[xxx]

this is a really cool keyboard 

[twitchytheinsideman]

tadpole plateless is da best. 

[seikosis]

I'm in! Hyped.

[shamb]

Hi Mr Zhol this is looks really cool one question that i have is will this keybord thock? as a more intermediate keyboarder i love the thocky and marbly sounds and would love to know if this keyboard isas thocky as i want it to be!

kind regards
mr shamb

[philzx]

what do i comment tho

[Mena]

Erm where number..

[zhol]

what do i comment tho

no

Hi Mr Zhol this is looks really cool one question that i have is will this keybord thock? as a more intermediate keyboarder i love the thocky and marbly sounds and would love to know if this keyboard isas thocky as i want it to be!

kind regards
mr shamb

no

Erm where number..

no

Wow, really fantastic. I love it. Just one thing? Could this maybe have USB hub capability incorporated? That's easy right?

no

where no thock mount glwic

no

[_IanOfEarth]

This is a slam dunk, looks amazing

[Kokaloo]

real excited for this one

[zhol]

Afternoon of day 4 of preorders opening, and we've just hit MOQ! I had kept my expectations fairly low for various reasons, but I'm still super stoked to see that people are interested in a niche design like this. Thank you all!

[zhol]

for those not in the 40's discord, here's a message from Alas. keymap now merged into qmk_firmware, and VIAL firmware blob/edge cuts/plate files should be in OP now, for people who'd like to do something with them.

[zhol]

production update:

• Tadpoles: in hand
• Screws: shipped
• Case: in production
• PCB: in production
• DB: in production
• Feet: sourced
• JST cables: quoted

cases are expected to ship from the manufacturer sometime late Feb/early March. still a bunch of preorder slots remaining, so uhhhh buy one or tell your friends

[zhol]

case manufacturer's up to anodization now, then it's on the fast track to shipping. hang tight folks
edit: 3.10 also i don't want to keep making posts every three days to bump the thread but pcb's are under assembly now

[zhol]

good news and bad news
1. Cases are at the local mail center for cbkbd to pick up, pcb's aren't far behind.
2. We didn't do due diligence on C3 daughterboard manufacturing, and I'll take responsibility on this one, I should have brought this up with alas before orders got put in. Long and short of it is that daughterboards were manufactured without the ferrite bead. It's a major pain in the ass for Alas to solder on all of these individually, so here's what we're going to do.
2a. Alas is going to bridge the connection where the ferrite bead was, so the daughterboard has a path to ground, just without the EMI mitigation that the ferrite bead provides. Daughterboard should be functional at that point.
2b. bully units will ship with a ferrite bead (they're  already with Alas at this point), for if you would like the protection it provides and can solder it on yourself. I'll add this step to the informal build guide.
If these measures aren't satisfying enough, well, yell at me here and I'll see if I can arrange for something else.

[zhol]

* mfchill has offered to do the ferrite bead soldering on all our daughterboards. I'm not sure how you do this digitally, but if the opportunity comes,  give him a pat on the back or something, we are extremely grateful for this.
* Cases have arrived, and anodization quality is below what we are comfortable with shipping out. While we ran QC on units from factory photos, we remarked that some of the cases looked like they had been affected by noticeable streaking, and our manufacturer representative assured us that they would be re-finished to meet our quality expectations. On unboxing the crate, it looks like they had re-finished the specific units we had pointed out, and not the rest of the batch. We've weighed our options, and have elected to pay to have Jake of P3D Store kote them in the colors they were manufactured in (he will be handling the matching). If you ordered black, you get black, if you ordered blue you get blue, and so on, no swaps, no custom colors per-customer. This means there's going to be another inevitable delay involved as units get sent over to Jake to be re-finished and back, as we’re not comfortable with shipping out something that looks like brushed aluminum. This is frustrating for us as it is for you, but we're trying our best to get something on your desk that isn't disappointing.
I would ask that you not send Jake or Alas a deluge of DMs asking about if you can get your case upgraded to a different color, as I don't want to volunteer Jake and Alas for any extra accounting+tracking, and I don't want to make any promises that other people have to work toward keeping. By my understanding, this is a business-to-business transaction, no room for customization of any kind.

Thank you all for your patience and bearing with us.

[mr_foggy]

I see preorders are still open on cbkbd, can I still pick one up?

[zhol]

I see preorders are still open on cbkbd, can I still pick one up?

yes, now that we have a path forward on re-finishing units and QC, preorders are back up

[Sax_______]

render genius sax, not only for these renders, but the ones you've done before, even if you don't remember doing them

ngl i forgot i did these renders too

[zhol]

Units should be with Jake of p3dstore.com. He says he's done with matching purple/lilac and silver, and still doing black and blue. Here's how purple has come out (with agreement from me):

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Incidentally, it's the same purple to be used with dededecline's uwu series. Admittedly it is a bit lighter than renders, but personally, I'm satisfied with the shade picked out.

Silver's been matched against Satin Aluminum (as seen on Helm by blind_panda):

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Black I think we've got figured out (pending a few tests from Jake), and blue is on its way to being finalized.

[zhol]

kote color matching done. Silver is satin aluminum, black is sumi black (iirc). give Jake 4 weeks or so (conservative timeline)to blast through the units we’ve given him, all in due time.

[kmfmppl]

Is there a red option?

[hzh0525]

bully and cute~~~

[Marboard]

Erm where number..

40% boards don't have a number row.

[zhol]

koting update from a days ago (april 24th) via 40% discord, posting here for visibility -

We are cooking now. Vaults are wrapping up and then we are full speed ahead on Bully. I already have some done but a bit to go

Erm where number..

40% boards don't have a number row.

that's right

Is there a red option? (Attachment Link)

the red was just a test color, sorry!

[zhol]

Bully will ship soon! Most colors have finished cerakoting and have shipped to us. Purple units will ship shortly after the other colors. Please reach out to update addresses if you haven't already.

use contact form for address update https://www.cbkbd.com/contact

[zhol]

alas has begun packing units for shipping, most should be sent out by monday.
purple units are experiencing a slight delay, but shouldn't be long behind.

if you're building yours, and this is your first time building plateless, or just need a general build instruction manual, I wrote something - https://blog.keyboard.gay/a-few-thoughts-about-assembling-bully-and-other-plateless-half-plate-keyboards

also, there's a link to a github repo provided in the OP where i've kept some files - firmware source for bully, PCB edge cuts and plate cuts, and STEP files for a 1.25u blocker HHKB top (as commissioned by shamb), and a 1.25u blocker WKL top for the 2x 3u/6u bottom row layout, graciously provided by blind_panda.

edit:
per alas,

What has been shipped:
Almost all silver units
All blue units
most black units
the remaining black and all purple units are shipping to me after koting (in progress rn, near done)

[zhol]

sorry for the wait everyone! purple/lilac kote and remaining sumi black units arrived, alas should be packin them up as soon as she can!

[zhol]

For anyone who was interested in an extra and lives near EU, there are units in stock now at Keeb Supply - https://keeb.supply/products/bully

If you were interested in an extra and closer to the US, keep your ears to the ground in the #bully channel in the 40% Keyboards discord as Alas of CBKBD puts stuff up for preorder periodically as available...