Hi all. As promised, here are some details/concerns. I am interested in your feedback. As usual, it's a question of balancing the desire to get the cases perfect and having to wait for another round of changes to the CNC program and ordering another round of samples (usually around two weeks). I am always inclined to favor getting things closer to how we want them, but I know this group buy has been a long time coming and at some point we just have to call it done and pull the trigger. I'm open to input on this matter.
Firstly, the the wrinkle coat, as one would imagine, adds a significantly larger amount of bulk to the surface. This means that for the wrinkle coat cases, the alignment pins have a much tighter tolerance and can even bulge the surface a bit when driven into place by the machine shop. I have asked them to investigate using narrower diameter pins on those cases, but it's possible the issue may not be resolved. I can ask them to make another case and am happy to pay for that. However, it will mean a further delay of a couple of weeks.
I am also concerned that the above described phenomenon may cause the bumpons not to seat fully into their pockets. Since I'm in the middle of a cross-country move I don't have access to my reference bumpons and have ordered replacements, which will arrive to me in the next couple of days. I'll test and report back.
Thirdly, I designed in recesses for the riser feet for bumpons. However, the shop forgot to create those pockets in the riser feet (you can see that on the left in the image above). I'm going to try the case with just the bumpons on the front with the riser feet installed, as it actually seems fine without the bumpons on the risers as it is now, but I feel like I'll want them to add these bumpon pockets back for the production run.
Lastly, on the back of the cases there are some subtle machining marks, which are really only visible if you hold the darker colored grey case at the right angle under bright light (they're not visible really with the brightness of white finish or the thickness of the wrinkle coat).
The machining marks are also left in place on the inside of the case. They're in a kind of cool spiral pattern and hidden anyway, so I figure this is cool with everyone. It saves money not to have to do a slow finishing pass here with the CNC machine.
These are not present, however, on the important show face of the cases: the front bezel around the keys and on the sides of the case, as you can see in the above image.
Please let me know what you guys think about these issues and we'll figure out how to proceed.
Poll