No charge for new colours ... with the size of the Toxic GB I would imagine PMK are making lots of money even after factoring in R&D for the colour
There isn't really R&D for a new color. You send PMK a pantone code, they request a sample of ABS in that color from their plastic manufacturer, and then they make a sample key for you to verify if the color is what you want. The only stipulations is you have to be able to use up a certain quantity of raw ABS (or PBT for that matter I think) in your buy. If you want a cool neon text color that may not be enough plastic utilized, but if you have modifiers and/or alphas you will probably easily use up enough plastic for them to make the purchase of a new color.
Thanks for the detail!
I probably need to learn more about the keycap manufacturing supply chain processes )
You can also outright buy a colour of plastic that then only you can use - it costs about $600, but then it is your personal stock of that individual colour.
Is that all?
Somehow I imagined it would be more than that. A lot more!
Now, how can I corner the market on shades of yellow? )
from my understanding
its slightly better than that
so
that $600 dollars isnt a fee, that $600 dollars buys x amount of the plastic, and that tone or shade or whatever is then yours
then
when you order anything in that colour, you get a discount on the cost because you already "own" x amount of the plastic, once that plastic runs out, that shade is still exclusive to you, however obviously you would lose said discount once more needs to be ordered
Wow! I really didn't realise keycap manufacturing was so complicated
I wonder if you could "colour squat" - pay the $600 for a certain colour, and not do anything with it except stop others from using it
Anyway, enough chatter about that, back on topic this GB gotta change from "production" to "shipping" soon!
Don't give the reddit guys any other ideas rowdy. :facepalm:
This would be hilarious.. Just go one number off on the pantone color, bam. Virtually the same color and they wasted money.
Not quite. As you can see 139 and 140 are pretty different for being only 1 number apart.
I don't think you could really "squat" on a color though. It just means If I bought PMS 139, and you wanted to use that color, you couldn't use my supply of 139. You would have to buy your own, since it isn't Signature Plastics material, it's mine, they're just holding on to it for me.
I work at a print company and its the same sort of system. If a customer buys a roll of adhesive vinyl for us to use, we can't sell that particular roll of vinyl to any other customer. It's their roll, we're just holding on to it for them. If another customer wanted to print on the same material, they absolutely can. They just have to buy their own roll, since the roll we have isn't ours to sell.