Topre PBT Spacebar (SECOND RUN!)

[Matt3o]

they want to sell directly to topre (=reason why they want the rights on the tooling)

[radio_killah]

they want to sell directly to topre (=reason why they want the rights on the tooling)

Greedy bastards..

[strict]

they want to sell directly to topre (=reason why they want the rights on the tooling)

i.e. Greed. They couldn't just be happy to participate and help bring a unique product to market that they could easily make some money on. I'll remember this **** the next time I consider placing an order from them or the next time they express interest in my future plate group buys ...

[delidana]

Thumbs down for EK on this .. They should support the community and not just think about money and rights.

[HoffmanMyster]

they want to sell directly to topre (=reason why they want the rights on the tooling)

Greedy bastards..

they want to sell directly to topre (=reason why they want the rights on the tooling)

i.e. Greed. They couldn't just be happy to participate and help bring a unique product to market that they could easily make some money on. I'll remember this **** the next time I consider placing an order from them or the next time they express interest in my future plate group buys ...

Yeah, that's ****ty.  If you want the rights to the tooling, buy the tooling.  If you want to sell merchandise in your shop, join this GB and help out.  Why would you get to join a community-organized GB and keep the tooling from it?  :facepalm:

Oh, and I've registered my interest.   

Also, Matt3o, if an individual user wanted to buy a large amount of these to help with MOQ, what quantity would be needed to help significantly?  I don't remember a definitive MOQ being thrown around, but maybe I missed it. 

[ComradeSniper]

Thumbs down for EK on this .. They should support the community and not just think about money and rights.

Yeah, what the ****, EK? Not cool 

[strict]

Thumbs down for EK on this .. They should support the community and not just think about money and rights.

Thumbs down for EK on this .. They should support the community and not just think about money and rights.

Yeah, what the ****, EK? Not cool 

I'm pretty sure Matt3o said it was mechanicalkeyboards.com that dropped out over tooling ownership, not elitekeyboards.

[HoffmanMyster]

Thumbs down for EK on this .. They should support the community and not just think about money and rights.

Thumbs down for EK on this .. They should support the community and not just think about money and rights.

Yeah, what the ****, EK? Not cool 

I'm pretty sure Matt3o said it was mechanicalkeyboards.com that dropped out over tooling ownership, not elitekeyboards.

I haven't seen any mention of EK doing that, I believe it's MK.      Don't hate on EK!

[delidana]

I apologize if it was not EK. I must have misunderstood.

[00zeRO]

Thumbs down for EK on this .. They should support the community and not just think about money and rights.

Thumbs down for EK on this .. They should support the community and not just think about money and rights.

Yeah, what the ****, EK? Not cool 

I'm pretty sure Matt3o said it was mechanicalkeyboards.com that dropped out over tooling ownership, not elitekeyboards.

I haven't seen any mention of EK doing that, I believe it's MK.      Don't hate on EK!

Don't hate on MK either please. We are talking serious money for this to even be done and a helluvalotta spacebars. From a business stand point, it makes no sense to buy 5000 spacebars if one cannot be sole distributor of them. Greed has nothing to do with our position. At the end of the day these are merely spacebars, and it appears that we all now know why Topre opted for ABS only all these years...sheer cost for tooling is cost prohibitive.

[RoflCopter4]

Guys, seriously, calm down. We're not dealing with IBM here. IBM could make their keyboards with the most expensive methods possible, with the most complicated and expensive tooling possible, and still know with almost 100% certainty that they were going to make a massive profit. MechanicalKeyboards.com is not IBM. EliteKeyboards is not IBM. Hell, even Apple Computer circa 1990 was no IBM: their venerable keyboards of the time had all keys made from PBT except the spacebar.

You're dealing with a product so prohibitively expensive to produce that even Apple computer at it's former height could not stomach the cost. Are you guys really, truly surprised, even angry, to see the people working to put together this product trying to find ways to deal with the price? I think we could show a little gratitude that anyone anywhere is willing to take on such a risky product as this at all. They will be lucky to break even. If they make a profit it will not be very big at all. How much more "support for the community" could any company possibly offer? Do you expect them to be ok with hemorrhaging money just so you can have a better spacebar on your expensive keyboard?

[HoffmanMyster]

Thumbs down for EK on this .. They should support the community and not just think about money and rights.

Thumbs down for EK on this .. They should support the community and not just think about money and rights.

Yeah, what the ****, EK? Not cool 

I'm pretty sure Matt3o said it was mechanicalkeyboards.com that dropped out over tooling ownership, not elitekeyboards.

I haven't seen any mention of EK doing that, I believe it's MK.      Don't hate on EK!

Don't hate on MK either please. We are talking serious money for this to even be done and a helluvalotta spacebars. From a business stand point, it makes no sense to buy 5000 spacebars if one cannot be sole distributor of them. Greed has nothing to do with our position. At the end of the day these are merely spacebars, and it appears that we all now know why Topre opted for ABS only all these years...sheer cost for tooling is cost prohibitive.

The amount of spacebars required to purchase has been unclear since the beginning, so I didn't realize quite how prohibitive it would be.  See below for my explanation on why I took offense to the comment.  Sorry for jumping to conclusions and criticizing you guys.

Guys, seriously, calm down. We're not dealing with IBM here. IBM could make their keyboards with the most expensive methods possible, with the most complicated and expensive tooling possible, and still know with almost 100% certainty that they were going to make a massive profit. MechanicalKeyboards.com is not IBM. EliteKeyboards is not IBM. Hell, even Apple Computer circa 1990 was no IBM: their venerable keyboards of the time had all keys made from PBT except the spacebar.

You're dealing with a product so prohibitively expensive to produce that even Apple computer at it's former height could not stomach the cost. Are you guys really, truly surprised, even angry, to see the people working to put together this product trying to find ways to deal with the price? I think we could show a little gratitude that anyone anywhere is willing to take on such a risky product as this at all. They will be lucky to break even. If they make a profit it will not be very big at all. How much more "support for the community" could any company possibly offer? Do you expect them to be ok with hemorrhaging money just so you can have a better spacebar on your expensive keyboard?

Speaking for myself, I understand that it can be quite the undertaking and it's not greedy to not want to buy a bunch of a product just to help it succeed.  It was the comment about needing to own the tooling that didn't sit well with me.  A company that supports GBs does not get capital from the GB, so it was an odd requirement.  If it had just been "we would need to buy too many of these to make it worth it" I wouldn't have questioned it at all.

[phoenix1234]

Thumbs down for EK on this .. They should support the community and not just think about money and rights.

IMO, it is not that bad. I don't mind if the space bar eventually appears on EK or MK shop.
It would more expensive but at least they took the risk of bunk delivery.

[delidana]

Guys, seriously, calm down. We're not dealing with IBM here. IBM could make their keyboards with the most expensive methods possible, with the most complicated and expensive tooling possible, and still know with almost 100% certainty that they were going to make a massive profit. MechanicalKeyboards.com is not IBM. EliteKeyboards is not IBM. Hell, even Apple Computer circa 1990 was no IBM: their venerable keyboards of the time had all keys made from PBT except the spacebar.

You're dealing with a product so prohibitively expensive to produce that even Apple computer at it's former height could not stomach the cost. Are you guys really, truly surprised, even angry, to see the people working to put together this product trying to find ways to deal with the price? I think we could show a little gratitude that anyone anywhere is willing to take on such a risky product as this at all. They will be lucky to break even. If they make a profit it will not be very big at all. How much more "support for the community" could any company possibly offer? Do you expect them to be ok with hemorrhaging money just so you can have a better spacebar on your expensive keyboard?

What i meant with "support the community" was that instead of talking about rights and owning the tooling they could buy some spacebars and sell them, that would also make us reach MOQ.

[ComradeSniper]

Thumbs down for EK on this .. They should support the community and not just think about money and rights.

Thumbs down for EK on this .. They should support the community and not just think about money and rights.

Yeah, what the ****, EK? Not cool 

I'm pretty sure Matt3o said it was mechanicalkeyboards.com that dropped out over tooling ownership, not elitekeyboards.

I haven't seen any mention of EK doing that, I believe it's MK.      Don't hate on EK!

Oh geez, I'm sorry. I got confused 

[ideus]

Dumb question: Can adapters for stems be developed that allow the use of any cherry PBT space bar? Molds for those could be cheaper and more people may be interested than in space bars only. I think I saw Matt working in one adapter for the main stem, another one be required for the stabilizers' stems. Again, it maybe just a dumb question.

[FrostyToast]

Dumb question: Can adapters for stems be developed that allow the use of any cherry PBT space bar? Molds for those could be cheaper and more people may be interested than in space bars only. I think I saw Matt working in one adapter for the main stem, another one be required for the stabilizers' stems. Again, it maybe just a dumb question.

Topre spacebars are 6x instead of 6.25
This would require first making some spacebars that almost no one would want to use on anything besides topre.

[00zeRO]

Well, since the numbers are on the table, we are talking 10's of thousands of dollars in order to make this happen. With an MOQ total of 5,000 spacebars. By the way, exclusivity is an extra 15k, so the only one who is greedy here is the MFR. Don't worry, if by some miracle we make this happen it will be a likely be a free license to the community at large be it GH or DT or even OC. No offense has been taken btw. We are all grown men here no matter what DT may have to say about us, haha

[dante]

I'm completely baffled to say the least.  Why would Topre even invest in these?  Wouldn't MX stem Topre switches be the future?

[Polymer]

Yeah..I don't blame MK at all for not wanting the tooling available for just anyone...Seeing as they'd probably need to stock a significant number of these, it would really suck if someone else came along and was able to undercut them simply because they got to use the tooling paid for by this GB.  Getting stuck with a bunch of spacebars they could no longer sell would really suck...

If the intent was so they could sell them to Topre then that is their own issue..but protecting their direct interests as far as stocking these items is more than reasonable...

[Matt3o]

PEOPLE calm down!

I'm sorry if there has been some confusion, it's probably my fault that I wasn't able to explain this properly. Let me try to be completely transparent here.

MOQ
Few pages ago we discussed the MOQ. We need to sell AT LEAST 2000 spacebars. We are at 35% of the total right now. So @HoffmanMyster, there's a lot of road ahead. A significant amount is like 500

Why 2000 if MK keeps saying 5000? Because my goal is to be able to reach $20K, which is how much we need to get this GB started. I don't care how many spacebars we end up with, the bottom line is that we need $20K.

This is not entirely true, because many will not confirm their order, others will change it. So to be safe this "purchase intent" should end up in the $24k range.

RESELLERS / DISTRIBUTORS / INVESTOR
I initially contacted 3 distributors. All three were interested in investing the whole $20k right away. This would let us start production immediately and I wouldn't be required to ship 2000 spacebars personally (which I would avoid if possible).

MechanicalKeyboards (EliteKeboards was never on the table) seemed very interested but dropped the ball when they knew that tooling ownership was not included. Do not blame them, please AND KEEP READING. MassDrop seems to be still on board, they are talking with the manufacturer to possibly reduce the MOQ or the unit price.

WHAT HAPPENS NOW
The purchase intent is mainly a "weapon" I have when contacting investors. "Hey look, there's a huge interest, wanna invest?". The more pre-sales the stronger my point.

If all the EXCLUSIVE distributor drop out, there's still one possibility: finding NOT-EXCLUSIVE resellers. Meaning trying to find 4 or 5 shops interested in buying 1000-1500 spacebars each. The early birds (those who participated in the purchase intent) would get a discount or some kind of benefit and they could decide from which reseller to buy their spacebars.

MechanicalKeyboard might not be able to take the whole investment, but they could still be available at buying 1000 (or more) spacebars.

WHAT IF ALL OF THE ABOVE FAILS
At that point I have to personally collect the money and ship all the spacebars hoping in the help of some member of the community. BUT we need at least $24k. Also, I don't know how it works in other countries but here I cannot move $24k without paperworks. I need in and out invoices, I need to register everything and pay taxes if there's even $1 earning.

Hope everything's clear now.

[Bucake]

thanks alot Matt3o
solid post!

[Belfong]

That seems like an awful lot of work and risk for something so small as a space bar. And I can't imagine the effort of one person to ship 2,000 space bars. Thank you for even trying Matt3o. This IS truly a Herculean effort.

[strict]

Thanks for the clarification, Matt3o. MK's position is more understandable now. Sorry if it seemed like I was getting my torch and pitchfork

Here's hoping MD is able to work out an agreement with BSP!

[dante]

That seems like an awful lot of work and risk for something so small as a space bar. And I can't imagine the effort of one person to ship 2,000 space bars. Thank you for even trying Matt3o. This IS truly a Herculean effort.

has EK even sold 2,000 Topres??

[crazystu]

I think everyone should have respect for MechanicalKeyboards.com for even considering doing this.

Has anyone attempted to contact Topre Corp/PFU/Leopold to ask if they'd be interested in helping out this group buy?
(Surely they'd be the most interested, as the space bar is for their keyboards only! Leopold have already made PBT spacebars with weird stem placing).

[RoflCopter4]

I think everyone should have respect for MechanicalKeyboards.com for even considering doing this.

Has anyone attempted to contact Topre Corp/PFU/Leopold to ask if they'd be interested in helping out this group buy?
(Surely they'd be the most interested, as the space bar is for their keyboards only! Leopold have already made PBT spacebars with weird stem placing).

If they were interested they'd have made their own long ago. The keyboard enthusiast community makes up a pretty negligible portion of their customer base.

[Matt3o]

No many orders lately. We are stuck at 35%

color preference:

Code: [Select]

    [Medium gray]
    [Sky Blue/Light Blue]
    [Red]
    [Mint/Light Green]
    [Blue]
    [Purple]
    [Green]
    [Pink]
    [Orange]
    [Beige]
    [Yellow]
    [Lavender]
    [Brown]
    [Magenta]

[RoflCopter4]

Is there any chance something like Massdrop could take this on? That might get a few more orders.

[Matt3o]

Is there any chance something like Massdrop could take this on? That might get a few more orders.

we are talking with MD about that

[bowji]

Massdrop seems like our best bet.
Im not sure if someone suggested this but just a food for thought.. IF this doesnt work out how about the idea of a bundle with 6x pbt mx spacebar + mx compatible topre sliders + stabilizers? I know this will require modding and wont be as easy as just pull n plug but it is an alternative to abs spacebars. IIRC the sliders are on shapeways and SP has molds for 6x mx spacebars[?].

[RoflCopter4]

Massdrop seems like our best bet.
Im not sure if someone suggested this but just a food for thought.. IF this doesnt work out how about the idea of a bundle with 6x pbt mx spacebar + mx compatible topre sliders + stabilizers? I know this will require modding and wont be as easy as just pull n plug but it is an alternative to abs spacebars. IIRC the sliders are on shapeways and SP has molds for 6x mx spacebars[?].

This wouldn't work. As mentioned previously, topre uses a different size space bar than MX boards do. Even with an MX compatible stem the spacebar would be useless.

[FrostyToast]

Massdrop seems like our best bet.
Im not sure if someone suggested this but just a food for thought.. IF this doesnt work out how about the idea of a bundle with 6x pbt mx spacebar + mx compatible topre sliders + stabilizers? I know this will require modding and wont be as easy as just pull n plug but it is an alternative to abs spacebars. IIRC the sliders are on shapeways and SP has molds for 6x mx spacebars[?].

This wouldn't work. As mentioned previously, topre uses a different size space bar than MX boards do. Even with an MX compatible stem the spacebar would be useless.

Well what he is actually wondering is if we can somehow use signature plastics spacebars instead and make them compatible with mx sliders. Sure, they would be useless on MX boards, but he only wants this for a lower moq.
That being said, it's still a bad idea. It would cost even more to get the sliders and we would be going backwards.

[bowji]

Well what he is actually wondering is if we can somehow use signature plastics spacebars instead and make them compatible with mx sliders. Sure, they would be useless on MX boards, but he only wants this for a lower moq.
That being said, it's still a bad idea. It would cost even more to get the sliders and we would be going backwards.

If Im not mistaken, the sliders are on shapeways already from Matt3o. So its the stabilizers that may be an issue...
But again this was just an idea 

[Matt3o]

zero orders in the last 24 hours. I'm a bit worried but we are close to x-mas, so I guess people is busy with other things.

I thought we could move before the holidays, but it doesn't seem the case.

[Sencha]

In

[wiredPANDA]

Form filled.

I'm playing catch-up on GH.  Haven't been online in a couple months.

[Matt3o]

We had some new orders yesterday.

We are at 37%

Color preference changed a bit

Code: [Select]

    [Medium gray]
    [Sky Blue/Light Blue]
    [Blue]    [Red]
    [Mint/Light Green]
    [Purple]
    [Green]
    [Pink]
    [Orange]
    [Beige]
    [Yellow]
    [Lavender]
    [Brown]    [Magenta]
Community impact also changed. Basically geekhack alone is 50%, reddit and deskthority 20% each, then the others.

On Monday Jan 5th, I'll contact all the resellers I could think of (please help me make a list), it is clear at this point that we can't proceed our own, but if we find 4-5 resellers willing to buy 1000 each we could still have our spacebar done!

If by January 16 I'm not able to get this sorted out, I will throw the towel and declare myself beaten!

Please keep ordering!

[Sygaldry]

We had some new orders yesterday.

We are at 37%

Color preference changed a bit

Code: [Select]

    [Medium gray]
    [Sky Blue/Light Blue]
    [Blue]    [Red]
    [Mint/Light Green]
    [Purple]
    [Green]
    [Pink]
    [Orange]
    [Beige]
    [Yellow]
    [Lavender]
    [Brown]    [Magenta]
Community impact also changed. Basically geekhack alone is 50%, reddit and deskthority 20% each, then the others.

On Monday Jan 5th, I'll contact all the resellers I could think of (please help me make a list), it is clear at this point that we can't proceed our own, but if we find 4-5 resellers willing to buy 1000 each we could still have our spacebar done!

If by January 16 I'm not able to get this sorted out, I will throw the towel and declare myself beaten!

Please keep ordering!

Well as to resellers, there are the widely known ones: MK, EK, Zeal, Pexon, CtrlAlt, Originative (sketchy, I know), keypop, techkeys, IMSTO, Qtan, Mechkb, keyboardco, etc. etc.

I'm sure there are hundreds more out there that I don't know of though.

[Macsmasher]

Form completed. I'm in for a 3 pack.

[swill]

We had some new orders yesterday.

We are at 37%

Color preference changed a bit

Code: [Select]

    [Medium gray]
    [Sky Blue/Light Blue]
    [Blue]    [Red]
    [Mint/Light Green]
    [Purple]
    [Green]
    [Pink]
    [Orange]
    [Beige]
    [Yellow]
    [Lavender]
    [Brown]    [Magenta]
Community impact also changed. Basically geekhack alone is 50%, reddit and deskthority 20% each, then the others.

On Monday Jan 5th, I'll contact all the resellers I could think of (please help me make a list), it is clear at this point that we can't proceed our own, but if we find 4-5 resellers willing to buy 1000 each we could still have our spacebar done!

If by January 16 I'm not able to get this sorted out, I will throw the towel and declare myself beaten!

Please keep ordering!

Well as to resellers, there are the widely known ones: MK, EK, Zeal, Pexon, CtrlAlt, Originative (sketchy, I know), keypop, techkeys, IMSTO, Qtan, Mechkb, keyboardco, etc. etc.

I'm sure there are hundreds more out there that I don't know of though.

Wasd doesn't do Topre at all do they?

[iamtootallforthis]

We had some new orders yesterday.

We are at 37%

Color preference changed a bit

Code: [Select]

    [Medium gray]
    [Sky Blue/Light Blue]
    [Blue]    [Red]
    [Mint/Light Green]
    [Purple]
    [Green]
    [Pink]
    [Orange]
    [Beige]
    [Yellow]
    [Lavender]
    [Brown]    [Magenta]
Community impact also changed. Basically geekhack alone is 50%, reddit and deskthority 20% each, then the others.

On Monday Jan 5th, I'll contact all the resellers I could think of (please help me make a list), it is clear at this point that we can't proceed our own, but if we find 4-5 resellers willing to buy 1000 each we could still have our spacebar done!

If by January 16 I'm not able to get this sorted out, I will throw the towel and declare myself beaten!

Please keep ordering!

Well as to resellers, there are the widely known ones: MK, EK, Zeal, Pexon, CtrlAlt, Originative (sketchy, I know), keypop, techkeys, IMSTO, Qtan, Mechkb, keyboardco, etc. etc.

I'm sure there are hundreds more out there that I don't know of though.

Wasd doesn't do Topre at all do they?

Sadly they don't.

[Sygaldry]

Interestingly enough, it looks like SP is working on getting Topre tooling (but I'm not sure if this will mean they will be able to match Topre profile which is ever so slightly higher than Cherry profile).

[RoflCopter4]

So, I don't know if this falls under some kind of trade secret, but just how do you work with PBT for keycaps anyway? If it has to get so hot and tends to shrink so much when cooling (kind of an obvious side effect) then what sort of tooling can even get around that? How? I wish I could understand what exactly costs so much here a bit better than the vague "it's hard to work with PBT" understanding I have now.

[byker]

Interestingly enough, it looks like SP is working on getting Topre tooling (but I'm not sure if this will mean they will be able to match Topre profile which is ever so slightly higher than Cherry profile).

I sent them an email a few months ago, and they said that they were looking at getting topre tooling by the middle of next year.

[Matt3o]

So, I don't know if this falls under some kind of trade secret, but just how do you work with PBT for keycaps anyway? If it has to get so hot and tends to shrink so much when cooling (kind of an obvious side effect) then what sort of tooling can even get around that? How? I wish I could understand what exactly costs so much here a bit better than the vague "it's hard to work with PBT" understanding I have now.

PBT spacebars already exists, it's just a matter of making it right

Interestingly enough, it looks like SP is working on getting Topre tooling (but I'm not sure if this will mean they will be able to match Topre profile which is ever so slightly higher than Cherry profile).

don't hold your breath and anyway it would DCS with topre stems.

[Sturmfrau]

May the odds be forever in our favor.

filled up!
2x grey
2x white

[Vizir]

So, I don't know if this falls under some kind of trade secret, but just how do you work with PBT for keycaps anyway? If it has to get so hot and tends to shrink so much when cooling (kind of an obvious side effect) then what sort of tooling can even get around that? How? I wish I could understand what exactly costs so much here a bit better than the vague "it's hard to work with PBT" understanding I have now.

PBT spacebars already exists, it's just a matter of making it right

Interestingly enough, it looks like SP is working on getting Topre tooling (but I'm not sure if this will mean they will be able to match Topre profile which is ever so slightly higher than Cherry profile).

don't hold your breath and anyway it would DCS with topre stems.

No DSA? I was hoping that they'd have both options.

[WiNloSt]

After reading through this thread I still have a question. I think I saw somewhere that you said black and white spacebar does not sell in pack does this imply that we can order 1 black and 1 white spacebar? But again, in the form, it says minimum order is 2 for both black and white spacebar. So my questions is can I order only 1 space bar? If it's not and the minimum order is 2 so can I order 1 for each black and white spacebar? Thank you.

[Matt3o]

After reading through this thread I still have a question. I think I saw somewhere that you said black and white spacebar does not sell in pack does this imply that we can order 1 black and 1 white spacebar? But again, in the form, it says minimum order is 2 for both black and white spacebar. So my questions is can I order only 1 space bar? If it's not and the minimum order is 2 so can I order 1 for each black and white spacebar? Thank you.

no, sorry at the moment the minimum quantity per color (black and white) is 2. It may change when we switch to the actual group buy, but not now.

I said that they are not sold in pack because you can actually buy 3 spacebars (if you write q.ty 3 you get 3 spacebars, not 6 in packs of 2).