I feel like an aluminum case for a $150-200 keyboard is already such a crazy pointless first-world luxury, it's kind of silly to quibble over 50 bucks (or whatever), especially since we haven't finalized the prices and I have been working hard find a way to give folks a pretty good deal. Whenever offering something for sale on the internet, some people will always comment that it's too expensive--even, as in this case, when the actual final price hasn't been announced yet.
TBH, the main reason for doing it in the US is to decrease complexity and logistics and increase accountability. When I say quality will be better, I'm not literally saying that CNC machines clear chips better on this side of the Pacific. My point is that it's easier for me to communicate with the machine shop in the US and whine to them when things aren't right--or sue them if they screw us over. The first pre-production sample on Monday, for example, had a few issues, which they are currently fixing for me. It has already been much easier to iron those issues out than when I've had similar problems with China suppliers on other (non-keyboard-related) manufacturing projects I've done in the past.
But anyway, USA manufacturing on a project like this is not that much more expensive, honestly. Believe me, I've been working on this design and gotten prototypes made both in the US and China and even machined one myself. I hired a China sourcing consultant to help me explore the possibilities of get it made there, including a cast version with post-process machining. It's not that I haven't considered all the options but that I simply decided, for reasons outlined above, that the current approach is best for a project of this scale (and unit weight) where most of the customers will be in the US and where we want it to be top quality. Courier shipping from China on a heavy item like is fantastically expensive (almost enough to offset the manufacturing cost difference), and sea freight doesn't make sense because of all the handling fees and potential import duties on such a small volume order where we're not filling up half a cargo container. I'm open to revision of these views if I were to find a cheap supplier in China with excellent communication, good accountability, and incredibly cheap shipping on small volume orders like ours will be, but after lots of looking I didn't find anything that quite met my requirements in that regard.
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