[IC] Small runs of Hand made Resin keycap SETS, 40%-100%. Maybe modsets, etc.

[punkonjunk]

Hi!
So I recently started making keycaps in december. I tend to turn everything up to 11, and this satisfied a ton of my desires - playing with goopy stuff, making small plastic things that are as fun as legos, saving money, and doing something no one else is doing. I quickly ramped up to a complete keycap mold of some SA grab bag stuff, and then did these:

http://imgur.com/gallery/RKumX - gold, metallic red, and black resin
http://imgur.com/gallery/eUJnn - Pimento and Olive colorway, with floating legends. (I need a better camera, that's on the list)

As you can see, these are bubbly. This is difficult to avoid, and with all the experimentation, heat treating, etc, I can't get bubbles to go away completely. HOWEVER, all I need is a couple of things - vacuum chamber, vacuum motor, and a pressure pot to start doing this REALLY right, bubble free, clean designs and good bottoms.

Right now, it costs about 700 bucks to get most of a key set from hotkeys project. They are beautiful keys (and obviously accidentally inspired me at some point with the clear cappings) but that cost is bananas. The heat treatment I'm doing makes these caps crazy hard, and I can't scratch them with PBT keycaps, so thats at least a kind of scientific pointer that they are at least about that hard.

I don't want to do any crazy taking orders super early - this is a rough IC, to get an idea of how I should proceed from here. Equipment will be some expense, so it'll be a month or two before I start getting ramped up.

As you can see, these are ROUGH. the first set, gold and red, even has crooked caps. I shot the stems and the clear part at once, but the stems I domed FAR too high, which resulted in some being too tall, some being crooked, etc. I worked this out in the second set effectively, but bubbles and a rough bottom are still an issue - this will be resolved rapidly with better molds, and man, do I have a plan. a crazy plan. I'll film it, because it's going to be awesome.

So, my plan will be, once I'm assembled for production, and happy with my new method - I will produce a set, then run an IC on that set specifically, with pricing fixed, good photos (gotta get a good DSLR) and any other options available. (I might offer a couple colorways depending on how many runs I do at once)
I plan to start with SA fully sculpted blanks, because that's what I like the most for keycap style, and because I just spent 183 dollars on SA blanks with 7bit. (he was so helpful and awesome with my specific needs)


So what do I want to know now?

Any input you have - besides "those are crooked and bubbly" (I know, fix is possible with better equipment)

What would you pay for a set of these for a 40%, 60%, TKL and 100% key set? Or, what would you expect them to cost?

Do you like the idea of limited runs of keycaps, instead of a giant pile of individually orderable keys? (Overruns/inevitable cancellations will be available for sale afterwards, individually, on my website)
I like this idea because 1: it's awesome to type on, and lets me offer something totally new, totally original, and I think a lot of fun. Ideally, I'll eventually also offer commissions to help folks make their perfect endgame. I have plans for mine - crystal clear caps with floating, cursive legends in crimson, with embedded blood spatter on them.

Do you think colorways like this would sell? Weirder stuff, or should I work on something closer to normal, or closer to a clone of a popular colorway, IE carbon, etc?
I really like the idea of opaque, but backlight compatible keycaps in fun colors. But I could also see clear or simple caps selling well, also.

[jal]

I love the idea of these.

I would expect them to be expensive. No idea what your cost inputs are or what you consider the value of your time to be. But 2x the price of a "normal", mass-produced SP set would be my guess at a floor.

Colors - I dunno, and don't know if you should listen to me, because my tastes are not terribly mainstream. I like Terminal, but otherwise, as far as popular sets go, not so much lately. Orange tones are trendy right now, but fashion is fickle (I kinda dislike orange tones, personally. Same with brown.). If I were you, I'd concentrate on making what you find pleasing first, and compromise for the market later. Also, if these cost as much as I think they might and depending on how much you invest on process equipment, it may make sense to sell these as custom one-offs.

Not sure if this is helpful or not. Think it is great that you're making these - I'm intimidated by the amount of work that looks like.

[Sneaky Potato]

I think this idea is very interesting, and it's only a matter of time before an artisan attempts to do this on a large scale. However, there are some things you might want to consider.


1. Your time vs the return. These are going to be time-consuming to make. Even single-shot keys would be incredibly time-consuming, so I can't even imagine doing double and triple-shot stuff. It would be extremely difficult to make doubleshot keys really match, so I would tell you right off the bat to start with only single-shot keys. Because of how much time you are going to spend on these, they're going to be expensive. That leads me to my next point...


2. Quality. If people are going to pay for these, they need to be high quality. People are willing to pay $150+ on a new keyset from GMK because they know the quality is going to be there, and it's going to be a reliable keyset. People are going to be upset if some of their keys are not the right shade, or the stems are too thin, or there are bubbles, which makes sense when you're paying a lot of money for something. Your work will be held under a bigger microscope than it would if you were just selling single artisans, because people are investing a lot more money. You should have custom undersides of the caps to make them thicker, and they have to be clean.


3. Getting burned out. Making SINGLE artisans is a lot of work. Making full sets of resin keycaps by yourself, to a level of quality that is pleasing to people paying large amounts of money, is a very large undertaking.


I would tell you to start off small, and make maybe five to ten perfect singleshot keysets. Sell those, and if the interest is great enough and the quality is there, then start making more complex ones.


I don't mean to sound negative about any of this or dissuade you from trying and going forward. This could be an awesome project, but you just need to make sure that these keys are quality and you'll have more customers than you can even handle. 

[punkonjunk]

I think this idea is very interesting, and it's only a matter of time before an artisan attempts to do this on a large scale. However, there are some things you might want to consider.


1. Your time vs the return. These are going to be time-consuming to make. Even single-shot keys would be incredibly time-consuming, so I can't even imagine doing double and triple-shot stuff. It would be extremely difficult to make doubleshot keys really match, so I would tell you right off the bat to start with only single-shot keys. Because of how much time you are going to spend on these, they're going to be expensive. That leads me to my next point...

Some folks charge an enormous ammount for really cool singles. I'd like to bulk up the time I spend on refining, and charge a more reasonable price, which should hopefully get me a lot of customers. (and maybe killed by other artisan makers) My calculations on a 200$ price point show it being WAY worth my time even with my current methods, and a 50% success rate on casts. I intend to get my success rate closer to 95%, and experimentation shows this is possible. I'm also experimenting with sprue-less casting, and working on a method that will produce nearly perfect keys that will only require the bottoms to be buffed and polished!

2. Quality. If people are going to pay for these, they need to be high quality. People are willing to pay $150+ on a new keyset from GMK because they know the quality is going to be there, and it's going to be a reliable keyset. People are going to be upset if some of their keys are not the right shade, or the stems are too thin, or there are bubbles, which makes sense when you're paying a lot of money for something. Your work will be held under a bigger microscope than it would if you were just selling single artisans, because people are investing a lot more money. You should have custom undersides of the caps to make them thicker, and they have to be clean.

This is a big deal for me, too. That's why I'm running two sets on my main boards, and I'd like to offer at least a 1 year warranty under the condition that the damaged cap is returned, which will hopefully CMA from scams and help provide some real faith in my caps. I don't know how I'll work that out against overruns sales, and how many I'll have to keep on hand, but I'll simply have to make sure I keep at least a bunch of caps to colormatch to if a recast is needed for warranty purposes.
I have plans for metal reinforced stems that are working well experimentally, but it doesnt' seem necessary - the heat treating I'm doing on the resin makes it CRAZY strong. I've had no stems break in place or while repeatedly pulling and swapping keys all over the place.
Since the caps will be cast together as a set (each set I posted came out of a single mold - the resin is mixed at once)

As for thickened undersides, this is absolutely necessary for OEM profile. For SA profile though, I've found it completely unnecessary - SA profile keycaps are INSANELY thick already.

3. Getting burned out. Making SINGLE artisans is a lot of work. Making full sets of resin keycaps by yourself, to a level of quality that is pleasing to people paying large amounts of money, is a very large undertaking.

Fortunately, this is a ton of fun for me so far. It also plays into gamecube button and part casting, which is less profitable but also fun, and plays into lost wax casting of precious metals. Down the road, I'll be able to offer body jewelry and precious metal keycaps, also, as I have most equipment for this already.

I would tell you to start off small, and make maybe five to ten perfect singleshot keysets. Sell those, and if the interest is great enough and the quality is there, then start making more complex ones.

One guy on reddit suggested maybe mod sets - that might be a good place to start with equipment and method testing in a way I can sell, and I could colormatch to popular sets like carbon or pulse, or simply do something generic and fun, like black with clear caps, partially opaque so they look solid but light up with backlights. I intend to make molds inside of my pressure pot so they fit in perfectly, I have a crazy plan, but I'll need to test it - maybe testing it with a salable product, or small set will help me satisfy both interest and my intentions of full sets. Otherwise, I might just do r3 and r1 singles. We'll see what happens!

I don't mean to sound negative about any of this or dissuade you from trying and going forward. This could be an awesome project, but you just need to make sure that these keys are quality and you'll have more customers than you can even handle. 

I appreciate ALL feedback, and all of yours! Negativity and criticism are important. I'd like to point out that while some of the bottoms are clearly gross on my second set - pimento and ipecac, the line-up is perfect and there are no weird gaps. Most of the caps are correct sized and good on the bottom, but space/mod row is at the edge of the mold which lead some to be kind of turdy. I should have photographed some cap bottoms and stems, that would be smart.

Manageable growth is important, too - I want to make sure I don't start taking orders or doing any sales before I'm ready. Some crazy person on reddit offered me 500 for the gold/red cap set and I shot him down, gave him info for where to watch going forward, but I'm not selling these yet, as I'm not confident enough in this product to sell without potential damage to future sales based on quality. I will say though, resin keycaps are AMAZING to type on, and I'm excited to share that experience with more folks.

[lolpes]

Wow that is all I can say about this!

I can't give much input other than suggesting a colorway to start with, something blue/grey or blue/purple would seem to please a lot of people from the start, if you go for 3 colors eventually, you can't go wrong with CMY

Count on me to be here waiting to buy a set!

[punkonjunk]

Wow that is all I can say about this!

I can't give much input other than suggesting a colorway to start with, something blue/grey or blue/purple would seem to please a lot of people from the start, if you go for 3 colors eventually, you can't go wrong with CMY

Count on me to be here waiting to buy a set!

I was thinking blue and yellow to match dangerzone would be fun, complementary and awesome, and dangerzone is probably my favorite set ever, if only it was sculpted. I also can't wait to get my hands on strong spirit, as that is pretty much the perfect colorway.
I was also thinking blue and orange, because you know, complimentary colors, and swirling could do some really cool portal theme stuff.
 Maybe pink and green, etc.

[Weltschmerz]

These have a lot of potential, but I would only really buy if they were in GMK. I'm sure a lot of GHers would agree.

[punkonjunk]

GMK as in the thick OEM/cherry profile reprints? Those are on the menu down the road, for sure. The big problem for GMK and similar is that they aren't quite as thick as SA, which will add some additional work - at first, I was modifying molds to help thicken walls and bottoms, but.... Last night, I figured something out with gamecube buttons - filling in with resin, then casting that gives me a super smooth, really beautiful bottom instead of weird mold-cut edges. I think this will work great for DSA and OEM style caps, which I should be able to infill against using the cap of a switch to make sure they fit right.

So that is definitely in the plans, for sure. They are simply more work than SA, and I am a big fan of SA myself, so I'm starting there.