Bad QC at Signature Plastic - pimpmykeyboard.com?

[elton5354]

Just received my key at pimpmykeyboard.com. Look at it...HORRIBLE! Do they not have QC?

[elton5354]

Did you try getting a refund?  You might want to start with that before making a stink.

Just got it not long ago and also just emailed them.

[Nighted]

Holy Merry Xmas ****!!!! Ripster is right!

I'm cancelling order with 7bit. No way I'm spending $170 ****ing dollars for this crap.

[elton5354]

Good news is that Melissa will send me a replacement after New Years. Free of charge I assume?

Good CS at least!

[whiskerBox]

Just received my key at pimpmykeyboard.com. Look at it...HORRIBLE! Do they not have QC?

I guess I am missing this one? whats wrong with it? Are you just mad because it is so close to the edge?

[elton5354]

I guess I am missing this one? whats wrong with it? Are you just mad because it is so close to the edge?

I'm just mad that you can't see it...

[whiskerBox]

Is it the little black smudge under the text?

otherwise it looks just like the pic on the site
[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 35828[/ATTACH]

[reaper]

Mine looks fine to me.  Guess I was lucky.

[Nighted]

You sound surprised.  As my sig indicates the odds of me ever being wrong are 5%.  Peter Drucker would NOT approve - 3 SIGMA!!

What I love about you brother is your humility!

[woody]

Is it the little black smudge under the text?

My HHKB has two tiny smudges on the otherwise white spacebar. I plan to wear them by careful thumb presses.

[squarebox]

I guess it's about luck...

[dorkvader]

Nice sprue mark.

I like their PBT: sprue marks on the back.

I told you they were different molds.

[dorkvader]

Post a pic of the Signature Plastic PBT keys (F, S, D) and I'll put in the Key Reference Wiki.  Anybody have a micrometer?

Hey, why is the spacebar a different color?

I'll see if I can take one of the keycaps down to one of the labs when I return to campus. Also, why do you keep complaining about the spacebars? Do you even own a PBT set from SP? Why are you even complaining about this (especially so "vocally")? Does it even affect you?

That said, my [V] key is an interesting example of bad QC at SP.

[telepete]

Looks bad. At least you'll get a replacement.

[suprsmo]

Im still trying to figure out how the fark to order from Pimpmykeyboard...

[reaper]

Im still trying to figure out how the fark to order from Pimpmykeyboard...

- click on picture of the key that you want and look for "Add to cart" on top
- repeat the steps until you have all the stuff that you want in your shopping cart
- click on that "Place order" in pink letters
- after that it should take you to PayPal page, if it doesn't, switch browser (works perfectly on IE9 but not on Google Chrome)

Good luck!

[suprsmo]

Haha, thanks reaper.. Yeah it's probably the fact that I'm using chrome..

[suprsmo]

Erm which ones were the Cherry MX compatible bad boys?

Panic and the X%&#! ?

[captain]

Post a pic of the Signature Plastic PBT keys (F, S, D) and I'll put in the Key Reference Wiki.  Anybody have a micrometer?

Yes. What do you want measured?

[captain]

Erm which ones were the Cherry MX compatible bad boys?

Panic and the X%&#! ?

I think that all of the single unit keys have MX mounts. IIRC, they tell you to write to customer service to be sure.

[captain]

[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 42824[/ATTACH]

SigPlast's PBT key.  [strike]0.0112"[/strike] 0.037" = 0.9mm thick

sprue mark verified on the REAR

edit: embarrassing science FAIL!  :-(

[dorkvader]

(Attachment Link) 42824[/ATTACH]

SigPlast's PBT key.  0.0112" thick

sprue mark verified on the REAR

I've been confirming rear sprue marks on SP PBT. Thanks for confirming that, and for the thickness measurement. I'd always wondered if they were actually thicker than their ABS.

edit: WAIT: The key ref wiki says SP DS are 0.8mm, and 0.0112" ~0.28mm. There's no way SP's thin-as-hell round4 doubleshots are actually 3x thicker than their PBT.

[mkawa]

i'm getting 1.0mm on my SP PBT keys, 0.8mm on my SP DS

for reference my kbc abs keys are giving me measurements between 0.7mm and 1.0mm

even if they were the same molds, wouldn't PBT's increase shrinkage on cooling make the caps smaller and denser?

[captain]

FAIL!  

Yes, I fail in SAE tool reading.  :-P  Why the hell isn't the USA on metric yet?  The 1970s were a lie!

The SAE micrometer is NOT metric, it's QUARTERS, so the first line is .025, not .01.  That gives a proper measurement of

.025 + .012 = .037"  = 0.94mm

Sorry for the confusion.

[captain]

Thanks for going gentle and using plenty of lube ripster.  I fully expected a vociferous castigation for that bad science.  I rarely make mistakes, but when I do they are apparently gargantuan.   :-P    The irony is that I have spent YEARS shouting at people to USE PROPER UNITS!  Oh well... glad I could learn from a mistake that didn't send a Space Shuttle plummeting into the sea with seven flaming astronauts on my conscience.  (this is the same mistake the NASA engineers made, iirc)  

edit: maybe not exactly (my memory was that there was a mix-up between metric and SAE units which caused the o-rings to fail, but here's the full story:)  http://ethics.tamu.edu/ethics/shuttle/shuttle1.htm

[captain]

Key Reference Wiki stickied above for how to use a Micrometer.

I recall seeing that in a wiki, but here is a quick and dirty tutorial, with practice sessions at the end:

http://www.linnbenton.edu/auto/day/mike/read.html

[captain]

"I believe that it is a writer's duty to speak the truth, especially unpopular truth. Especially truth that offends the powerful. It is a writer's obligation, I believe, to be a critic of the society he lives in. If the independent freelance writer will not speak the truth to us and for us, then who will? Do we get the truth from politicians? Do we get the truth from Chambers of Commerce? Do we get the truth from the bureaucrats of government? From the Cattlemen's Association? From Time or Newsweek or CBS or ABC or NBC? Do we get the truth from the TV evangelists of commercial religion? Do we even get much truth from science and scientists?

"Well, we get some. But not enough. It seems to me that the majority of scientists are specialized technicians. Most of them long ago sold their souls to commerce, to industry, to government, or war."

- Edward Abbey, from the speech "Something about Mac, Cows, Poker, Ranchers, Cowboys, Sex and Power...And Almost Nothing About American Lit".

[captain]

It should also be note that the bottom edge of SP keys has a flange, so measurements of the bottom edge, which is about all you can really get into a micrometer without destroying a keycap, is probably going to measure thicker than the actual sides of the keycap.  Oh, wait, I broke my F4 key pulling keys off my WYSE50 keyboard, so I do have a piece of an old SP keycap (someone correct me if I have guessed wrong that Wyse50 keycaps were made by SP) without a flange...

[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 42965[/ATTACH]

0.026" = 0.66mm

[IvanIvanovich]

I'm pretty sure Wyse caps were produced by SP, however both were a different mold than the thin one they are currently using.

[dorkvader]

Congrats for learning how to use a SAE micrometer - the current generation of Geekhack Mobile users can't even read a post correctly. See the Key Reference Wiki stickied above for how to use a Micrometer.

And for a COMPLETE rundown of Signature Plastic defects see this post:  GLWIC.

Even the Deskthority.net guys are complaining.

Speaking of which, when I got my \KL SP PBT set in, and eyeballed the keycaps, I said they sure looked thicker than my Doubleshot cloverleaf. You didn't believe me, infact, I think you said "mcrip". Why did you doubt? It was already proven that hey used different molds for the PBT. (by looking at the sprue mark on the back) (likely to deal with the PBT shrinkage better)

[captain]

I'm pretty sure Wyse caps were produced by SP, however both were a different mold than the thin one they are currently using.

From simple observation, the 1980s Wyse keycaps look to be from the exact same molds as the KeyboardRunner doubleshots recently made by SP.  Same thin plastic sides, same sprue mark on the front,  However, to bolster your contention, the Wyse50 keyscaps have vertical support fins, like buttresses between the stem and sides, while the KBDRUNNER does not.

I'll try to get around to shooting some more pictures.

[IvanIvanovich]

heliar had some nice shots of all 3 version of Wyse keycaps which range from Cherry thick to current SP with one in between which is the most common Wyse caps, but the image links seem to have broken.

[dorkvader]

my WYSE 50 has several different styles of keycap on it. The legends of the nicer-eight-stabilizer ones appear to be somewhat thinner.