I went to go give him a visit and did a few things:
1. Told him to make the USB cut out just a square.
2. Made the USB cut out bigger. You can just fit the plastic part of the male side into the hole now.
3. Told him to raise the walls 1 mm to make sure that they align with the bottom of the keycaps or a touch higher. (better a bit too high than a bit too low)
4. Cut out the rubber like material that goes between the PCB and the aluminum insert and screwed it all together to make sure it works. So now we have PCB mounted switches but a plate mounted PCB.
5. Confirmed that the aluminum is 5052, which is good for anodizing if you want to do it later.
6. Weighed it in at 1 pound, 14 ounces. That's with the case and metal insert but not the keyboard.
A few new things to mention:
1. After speaking with him about quotes, there will NOT be any done in steel. Apparently when you work with steel the dust that flies off contaminates other materials so they cut steel in a different location. So because of this they will all have to be aluminum. Since a lot of people said they wanted it in steel, I will ask again once I get quotes to see if they would want to switch to aluminum or just bail out.
2. Only the outside of the case will be glass beaded, the inside will retain the normal shiny surface and you would be able to see the weld marks on the inside if you removed the keyboard from the case.
3. To attach the metal insert to the case itself, there were two options. The first is you "tack" it to the case, which is just spot welding a few places. The second is that you use a metal-to-metal adhesive and glue the two pieces together, which would be done by myself rather than by them. He recommended I do it this second way and that it would be cheaper, so that is likely how it will be done.
I'll be visiting again Friday most likely and he should have a quote for me by then. I took some more pictures and videos of these little things I did and will put them up later tonight.
