Quick update.
Firstly, thanks to all who posted the awesome Astrophysical Purple pics. I'm gratified that everyone else is as happy with how those came out as I am.
I sent out the last of the Retro Refrigerator cases this week—unfortunately had to cancel a couple of those orders (always in the sequence in which they were placed) because I got a few back with minor cosmetic issues, and simply wouldn't feel right having to ask those two or three people to have to wait another 3-4 weeks while I got them stripped and recoated. The last handful of cases from r2.5 are Venice Beach, which I'm slated to get back and ship next week. I've gotten into a pretty good rhythm with the new powder coating shop, and I think it's going to work out well going forward.
Also, because I (astonishingly), keep getting emails asking if I'll do another run, I've put up an IC to gauge interest. I'm not quite sure we could hit the MOQs, but frankly I'm always surprised by people's interest in and enthusiasm for my stuff, so we'll see. 
I'm hoping that my Retro Refrigerator + Novatouch from Originative wasn't on that list! OH NOES!!!
I think it was actually only three orders total that I had to cancel, but unfortunately one of them was Originative's order, which included more than one unit.
It's kind of a long story, but in case you're curious, I'll give you all the details. The situation is probably also a big part of why the r2.5 cases took as long as they did in the first place. The first batch of r2.5 Retros I got back from the old powder shop had some cosmetic flaws on the powder coat surface. I told the shop that the quality wasn't up to the standards of us keyboard nerds, and they said they understood and would strip and refinish them. They seemed fine with this at the time, but I think they must have been secretly frustrated or resentful of it or something, because from that point forward they started dragging their heels and taking
forever to turn around parts to me. (A job that was supposed to take 1-2 weeks literally dragged on for months, and eventually their work on the cases more or less just ground to a halt.) This is always the tricky dance when working with shops on keyboard projects. I am generally very picky about finishes and details (and I have to be, because so are all of you
). This is all good and well and I have no intention of changing on that front, but there is always the risk of alienating the shop and having them give up on us in frustration at our "impossible standards," especially since keyboard projects are usually minuscule quantities for most production shops and thus sort of already on the border of being worth it for many vendors. (I usually have to cajole and negotiate primarily on the issue of lowering MOQs.)
Anyway, as mentioned in previous posts, I recently transitioned to another powder shop after searching long and hard for another that could do equivalent or better quality work. They turned around all the cases I shipped recently, such as the purples and whites, within their promised timelines (an extreme rarity for any powder shop!) and the quality was great. However, the batch of refinished Retros I got back had the same cosmetic issues as before. After some significant amount of investigation and experimentation with the new shop, we've been able to form a pretty good hypothesis as to what was happening on those. The new shop posits that the old one was using contaminated blast media. I thought maybe this was just a cop out and an excuse to blame somebody else. However, this week we conducted a test where we coated, side-by-side, an anodized case and one of the blasted cases from the old shop. The anodized case came out perfectly but the case blasted by the old shop had the same cosmetic issues as all the others before. This would seem to support the hypothesis.
As such, I think no amount of stripping and refinishing the new cases is going to solve the problem, so I've just had to declare "powder-coat bankruptcy" on those and I think I'm just going to have to scrap those parts. I sent a message (and refund) to Sheraton last night saying as much. If he wants to get some more cases in any potential next round with fresh parts, I'll be happy to make them for him, but I just couldn't in good conscience ask anyone to wait longer while still holding onto their money.
It really pains me to have to not be able to supply and cancel even a single order, but fortunately I've only had to do this in less than like 1% of orders ever, so even though I spent a lot of time talking about when things go wrong, don't get the wrong impression: it's actually vanishingly rare. As you can see from the thread above and all the previous GB threads, the vast, vast majority of GB participants got their cases long ago and seem quite happy.
