TL;DR: getting closer, but having to consider alternatives to ano.
Thanks, ramnes (and others)! Patience is certainly appreciated. This is just a hobby for me, but I'm keeping on top of things every day, and believe me, nobody is more frustrated by not being able to get rolling on this yet more than I am. And I don't want us to take money from anybody until all the details are totally nailed down. As I've said before, I want these things to look really nice and I don't want to put my name on a project unless we can be reasonably confident of that. For better or worse, that takes as long as it takes.
I have been doing my best to cajole vendors along, but also taking care not to alienate them with a false sense of urgency. You have to understand that for most production shops, an order of the size that ours is likely to be is kind of small potatoes. The cases may cost a lot due to materials, machine time, and labor, but the margins on this kind of thing are actually pretty low for a machine shop.
Anyway, in keeping with the timeline, we did get the second anodizing sample back from a totally new anodizing vendor this week. Very much to my horror and annoyance, however, these parts also had cosmetic imperfections that I deem unacceptable. And, apologies if this is TMI, but for whoever cares, I'll now take a deep dive into the technical and logistical issues so everybody knows exactly where things stand.
So we come again to the annoyances (and relative weaknesses) of USA vs China manufacturing. The great thing about working with shops in the US is that it's often relatively much easier to communicate, and for objects like huge honking heavy keyboard cases, the shipping is much less expensive for the majority of buyers who, for MassDrop and GeekHack, are based in North America. Working with the machine shop has been great. The head engineer and owner at the USA shop is extremely thoughtful and has suggested several key improvements to the case design and manufacturing process. He fabricated elaborate jigs so they're all set to churn these things out at consistent speed and quality in production. After a few experiments and early hiccups, they totally nailed the process. But the problem is that nobody in America seems to make consumer products anymore, so it has been really hard to find a finishing shop that is willing to guarantee a consumer-grade level of cosmetic finishing on the machined parts, whether it be ano or powder coating. Once they hear that the finish matters, these finishing shops (bafflingly) get scared off and start saying they're not willing to guarantee any level of finish, for fear of liability or losing money on rejects. It's a little nuts. Apparently, there are all sorts of industrial applications for anodized and powder coated finishes where the actual costmetic properties of the finish don't matter all that much, and most US shops tend to target those less picky customers. You can find shops that do really high-end finishes in the US, but they all would totally blow the cost of these into something that really doesn't make sense for hobbyist keyboard cases. (I myself have paid $300-400 for Korean CNC anodized cases that I love, but I'm not sure I could in good conscience offer something at that price.)
So what is wrong with the finish? There are some splotchy patches where the anodizing looks darker in some areas than in others. Through a lot of experimentation and elimination of potential culprits, we believe this to be due to impurities in the metal. We have now tried metal from two different vendors, however, and have worked with two different anodizing providers. We've washed the parts, used a new blast cabinet and medium, etc. In all cases, the same problem semi-randomly shows up. The general recommended solution to this problem is go use certified aluminum, which has a guaranteed composition and purity, but the issue there is that it's crazy expensive and again would blow the budget and target price. (When you use certified material, you're paying for all sorts of guarantees beyond material composition that don't matter in our case, such as material strength and tolerance of the raw cut part.)
Both I and the engineer at the machine shop have been very surprised that this seemingly trivial last step of the process has brought the project to a grinding halt. He has anodized many smaller parts without any cosmetic issues, but apparently large flat surfaces such as ours (which are unusual for anodized parts) tend to exacerbate these problems on anodized extruded aluminum. So, to be fair to him, there was no reason for him to think that anodizing was ever going to be anything other than the really easy final step where we drop if off at the anodizer for a day and get it back looking perfect. Instead, trying to solve this problem affordably has consumed 90% of the pre-production stage.
After all this fuss trying to get a perfect anodized finish, it seems futile and unwise invest any more time into more time-consuming anodizing experiments that may well just end up not working. Duracoat is a ridiculously cool coating used on firearms that I would love to use, but that would add about $30 per unit to the price already quoted. So I've given the shop in the US one more week to come up with two perfectly powder-coated samples (the last remaining affordable option), on my doorstep by next Friday. Since I've already paid for the tooling and jigs, I hate to change course precipitously, but at some point one must simply cut one's losses and consider the jigs a sunk cost. I don't want to spend the rest of my life doggedly trying to get these made in the USA if it's an uphill battle.
If powder works out, the advantage is we can offer white (and perhaps more colors) as options, so there is at least that upside. Another reason I personally like powder is that it's much less resistant to absorbing skin oils due to its lower porosity and thus is both easier to clean and looks nicer for longer without being cleaned. Powder does have less precision because the layer thickness is higher, but for parts like this, that hardly matters.
So, yeah, if that doesn't work, I'll just use the shop in China that made the prototypes and whom I know can produce these with an excellent finish quality. There will be considerably more headaches for me in sorting out the import duties, pricing, and fulfillment logistics, which frankly I was hoping to avoid. But if it's what I have to do so make sure we get our cases without paying a fortune, I'll do it! :)
As soon as I know something solid, you guys will too. I'm happy to answer any questions or to hear suggestions on different approaches I may not have considered.
Thanks again for being with me every step of the way. Just like with my previous projects, I know it's usually just a question of working out the process up front and then it's usually smooth sailing. But, as I say, I prefer to work all this out before we've taken anybody's money rather than the other way round. ;)
-Ryan
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