Portal Function + Esc 13 Key PBT Dye Sublimated key group buy (Discussion THREAD)

[Tranquilite]

There's a good chance that I will be in for 2, maybe 3 sets assuming the 50+ price point is reached.

[enoy21]

That is a nice idea on the Icon for Escape ! I like !

[edhead999]

I'd be interested in a set!

[bionicroach]

+1 set here.

[gilgam]

In for three sets

France

[Ragnorock]

Okay, just got off the phone with Melissa, she looking over the designs now for any problems and is going to let me know if anything needs to be adjusted before she runs some test molds. She said there wouldn't be any problem with copyright, as the designer of the SVGs has consented to send them for keycaps (Ichitz.) Once I get the go-ahead on the keycaps, I will be starting a new thread to collect orders, with format and details of how I'm going to run the ordering in that thread.

Here's what I've been considering...
Canadian Distribution:
Since I live reasonably close to the border (~7 hours) and occasionally head across to Canada a few times a year, I will attempt to head up there to ship any Canadian orders we get. This will avoid any customs problems and hopefully get them to you sooner for cheaper. For that reason I'm probably not going to be limiting the number of orders to Canada, however shipping will be more expensive than to the US. Not because Canada's postage rates are higher (I'm expecting about the same $6 flat rate,) but it is due to me having to make a trip up there to ship them somewhat cheaper. I'm not going to be trying to profit any significant amount of of this buy but I'm going to need to charge a bit more for shipping to cover the extra cost and my time of doing it. I'm a businessman so I won't be losing money on this, but I've no intention of charging any more than absolutely necessary. This isn't about making some meager profit for me, I deal in greater dollar values than this. Basically I'm doing this to be able to charge less to you than I would have to if I just went down to the post office and did international shipping. How much less is yet to be determined, but it isn't going to be more than a few dollars since I'm going to have to take some of the difference for myself. How much depends on how many orders we get etc. I hope everyone that that applies to is fine with that, if not speak up.

EU/Non NA International Shipping:
I'm not really interested in doing it unless we find a distributor for each region. Meaning I only send one package per region and that person then mails the rest to the other people. The cost there is likely going to be even higher, so before you commit to a set be aware that shipping is likely going to be around $20 or more. We have tried to give as accurate estimates as possible throughout this thread, so check back there for that. There is a reason most group buys here are limited to the US or NA. If anyone has any insight into this or would like to be a distributor then speak up. I am willing to ship to a US address where your contact can ship them to you or you are going to be there but not on any particular timeframe since I've only the basest idea when we will be getting these. Hopefully before Thanksgiving because thats when I plan on going to Canada for it.

For anyone not in NA interested in buying this set please restate that you want some and list your country/region. How many sets you want isn't so important as long as they fit into a small size package. (<8 sets) Feel free to list how many you want anyways though, since it will help me better estimate demand.

All NA orders can just wait until the new thread to post their interest. We've got enough to run this buy for sure and I lost count ages ago how many sets we were on. When you do though please include US or Canada somewhere.

Dave out.

[gmorf33]

oh sweet, i just noticed this thread.  I'll keep my eye open for the new orders thread.

[TheSoulhunter]

Uhm...
I'd like to have 2 sets, but I live in Germany!

[Ragnorock]

Okay... *shudder* what does everyone think about pad printing?

Lol.

Melissa just emailed me back about the designs and she said that many of them are too detailed to do with doubleshots so we have 2 options: Simplify them a lot more, or do them via pad printing.

Pad Printing means:

They won't last forever like doubleshots do, but hey, its the damn function row, how often do you depress those keys really?
The prices will be even cheaper, probably significantly cheaper.
Everyone will cry because they aren't doubleshots.
There will be essentially perfect detail to where we can go back to how the SVGs were without all the adjustments.
Less people are going to want them because they aren't doubleshats

Simplification means:

"Lolwut is this supposed to be" with half of them.
Much longer design/group buy process while Ichitz and I work out how to get them to look okay.


Make your choice Geekhack. I'm okay with either path. I figured this would be the case from the start.

[Arkonos]

I'm ok with printed, never had anything else.

I offer myself as distributor for EU. I live in Austria, I'd ship to everyone who has no closer distributor. But I don't know if others trust me, since I'm very new and have never sold or bought anything from here yet.

Ragnarock, how many distributors do you want?
I'd say once the ordering thread is opened, I'd post shipping costs to various locations and people who want to order through me PM me and in the end I tell you how much orders I got. It would be simpler if they'd send me the money and I give it to you in one big transaction, but that's a question of trust in me.

[Intense]

ahhh id be out if they were pad

Okay... *shudder* what does everyone think about pad printing?

Lol.

Melissa just emailed me back about the designs and she said that many of them are too detailed to do with doubleshots so we have 2 options: Simplify them a lot more, or do them via pad printing.

Pad Printing means:

They won't last forever like doubleshots do, but hey, its the damn function row, how often do you depress those keys really?
The prices will be even cheaper, probably significantly cheaper.
Everyone will cry because they aren't doubleshots.
There will be essentially perfect detail to where we can go back to how the SVGs were without all the adjustments.
Less people are going to want them because they aren't doubleshats

Simplification means:

"Lolwut is this supposed to be" with half of them.
Much longer design/group buy process while Ichitz and I work out how to get them to look okay.


Make your choice Geekhack. I'm okay with either path. I figured this would be the case from the start.

[Ragnorock]

At least one per continent lol.

And yeah I feared as much about that. Pad printing is all I've ever had anyways so it doesn't bother me too much but I'm sure there are a bunch that don't want anything else.

[chenga91]

Is it possible to ask her which keys work for double shot and get double shot for those, and for the others, get the pad print? Or would they look weird?

[hashbaz]

They would look weird next to each other

[xbb]

simplify I'd say

[Quarzac]

I would want the originally pitched esc key as a doubleshot, but the rest could all be pad printed. I hit esc way more often than the others.

[tr4656]

I don't care that much about pad printed keys as long as it looks cool.

[Ragnorock]

I would want the originally pitched esc key as a doubleshot, but the rest could all be pad printed. I hit esc way more often than the others.

I'll see how much that costs and get quotes for pad printing. In the meantime I want everyone to sound off on whether they want to go with pad printing or try and force it to work with doubleshots: Here's Melissa's emails. I'm okay with just the esc key being a doubleshot if they think they can make the design work. It would need more space put between the arrow and the edge of the portal at the very least for modifications.

David-
I reviewed your custom legends with engineering and production and unfortunately they feel that most of these are beyond the process capabilities for insert molding. The detail on some of them is just too extreme. I would be happy to quote pad printed keysets if you would be willing to go that route. I am sorry if this creates any problems, but latest order of 'gamer graphics' that we have been asked to produce is causing our technical people to pull their hair out. Even though we are charging slightly higher amounts for unique legends, the time we would have to spend in modifying the graphics to make them moldable is going to exceed the price we charge.

(My response)
I feared that would be the case, is there any possibility that you could point out areas to be simplified/reworked? I can have Ichitz rework them at length or do them myself in order to get it to where they would look acceptable. I'm not as particular as the guy running the Team Liquid keycap group buy about them looking perfect. I'm fairly sure most of the people interested in the buy want them to be doubleshots. How good is your pad printing? I bought a set of pad printed legends recently and they wore off within 24 hours lol. Pad printed would make them look great I'm sure but I'll have to see what everyone says.
 
David McClellan

(2nd email)
Insert molding graphics like what you are requesting that have irregular areas pose unique problems. When we cut the masters in brass to produce insert molded graphics, the smallest cutter that we can successfully use, without it continually breaking, is 0.012". What this means is that 0.012" is the smallest that any portion a graphic can be. So for example on your graphic F8, the areas that come to points will loose that definition in insert molding. The smallest the point can be is 0.012", which is larger than the fattest portion of the 'teardrop/flame' at the 2 o'clock position.
Another thing to understand is when an image is not a uniform line, like letters and words on standard keyboards, our engraving machine follows the outline of the graphic. So in fact the small point on that image at 2 o'clock would be 0.012" and then the cutter will follow the outline of the teardrop/flame shape. The largest portion of this small image will then be 0.024". The teardrop/flame as currently drawn measure 0.011" at the fattest point.
 
For pad-printing, we use a 2-part epoxy ink on full touch keyboards. I am surprised to hear that yours only lasted 24 hours...

[RColinTaylor]

I would be fine with pad printing as long as it came out at a much lower price in the end (ball parking around $12 pre-shipped). However, I would also like to see on a much larger scale of desire the doubleshots created and if it so need be I wouldn't mind waiting as long as it took.

Also, if it came down to it, maybe we could turn this into a "set of esc keys" rather than calling it a fn row. We could have 3-5 or however man keys would work of doubleshots that would serve as a collection of portal themed escape keys that can be used for any purpose deemed by the user.

[jonnybastard]

Would rather have doubleshots if it can be done but would still be keen for a few sets if they end up pad printed.

[Ragnorock]

Tomorrow I'm going to get price quotes on the set with all pad printing and all pad printing except for the escape key- its going to be cheaper. Meaning you're probably looking for something more like $10 shipped US at 100 sets like I'm planning on waiting for. If it runs out of steam well before that then I guess not but looking at this thread I don't see that happening, especially if I offer some international options. But hell, RColin, I'll save you the shipping and meet you for lunch lol. We live in the same bloody town and it ain't big!

If you look at the quote its about $7 a set for the doubleshot set at 100 orders so... they're going to be cheap. I'm not sure how much cheaper they CAN get but we'll see.

[F u r u y á]

I would be fine with pad printing as long as it came out at a much lower price in the end (ball parking around $12 pre-shipped). However, I would also like to see on a much larger scale of desire the doubleshots created and if it so need be I wouldn't mind waiting as long as it took.

Also, if it came down to it, maybe we could turn this into a "set of esc keys" rather than calling it a fn row. We could have 3-5 or however man keys would work of doubleshots that would serve as a collection of portal themed escape keys that can be used for any purpose deemed by the user.

I like this idea since that way we would be able to have the pair keys

• orange portal (+half man)
• blue portal (+other half)

(sherryton idea)

[Ragnorock]

Sorry man, I don't think that's possible even with pad printing. It has to be all one color, though we should have some ability to choose colors. We could do that but it'd have to be all blue, all orange, or all white to match the rest. We can do any design of the originals though, so we may want to revisit those and pick whichever ones we want now. So yeah. I'll get quotes for different color options too.

[Urglifast]

Sorry man, I don't think that's possible even with pad printing. It has to be all one color, though we should have some ability to choose colors. We could do that but it'd have to be all blue, all orange, or all white to match the rest. We can do any design of the originals though, so we may want to revisit those and pick whichever ones we want now. So yeah. I'll get quotes for different color options too.

what you could do is one orange key and one blue key...and then play with the image so the guy is going into one and coming out of the other.  place at opposite ends of keyboard for ultimate effect.

[F u r u y á]

Sorry man, I don't think that's possible even with pad printing. It has to be all one color, though we should have some ability to choose colors. We could do that but it'd have to be all blue, all orange, or all white to match the rest. We can do any design of the originals though, so we may want to revisit those and pick whichever ones we want now. So yeah. I'll get quotes for different color options too.

Is it too much detailed even for pad printing? Does pad printing allow only one color too?

If a) is true, nothing we can do about. Okay.
If b) is true, then (as Urglifast said) we could make one key all orange and other all blue (and I would be extra happy if White BGColor is chosen)

[one_each]

I'm only interested in doubleshots, but OK with a smaller set.

what you could do is one orange key and one blue key...and then play with the image so the guy is going into one and coming out of the other.  place at opposite ends of keyboard for ultimate effect.

That's what I would like to see, one blue key and one orange key.

[Urglifast]

That's what I would like to see, one blue key and one orange key.

I have an idea for what you could do for this, i'll do a quick mock up in paint when i get home from work and let the masters do their mad Photoshop work after.

[Ragnorock]

More email updates:


Hey Melissa, if you could I'd like quotes for the following orders:

13 pad printed keys, all white legends on black keys, varying by order quantity
12 pad printed keys, and one doubleshot. The doubleshot being the esc or "F0" key in the set I sent you. Same colors and what quantity discounts apply and how they would work different from all pad printing.

To my knowledge you can only print one color on a single key, is that correct?

11 pad printed with 2 dual color (one white and orange on black and the other blue and orange on black) pad printed keys.

Finally, 11 white on black, and 1 orange on black and 1 blue on black keys (what the dual color keys would be if dual color isn't possible.

I know that's sortof confusing but I'm writing this out on my phone and have little time. Let me know if you need any more explanation.

I'm currently waiting for the starcraft group buy guy to respond, I'm giving him till tomorrow until we scrap his buy and start a new one under me.

(Reply)

David-
I will work on getting that pricing together - We can sometimes print 2 colors on a keycap, but with the detail on these images, I would say that isn't going to be possible. One other thing I was discussing with my boss was sublimation printing... not sure why I didn't mention it before. We can generally get just as much detail (if not better) than pad printing. I was going to print a few keys with your logos and email them to you later today. The restriciton I have with sublimation is the color. For starters we cannot print white. Secondly, I print the paper in house and while I have a very good Epson printer, the ink often does not cooperate and give me the exact same color I have specified in the program (I also cannot match to resin colors we have). I can tell the printer in general to print blue or light blue, but I couldn't match a specific CMYK or RGB color. Would you consider this as an option? The keycaps would need to be PBT (though I think some of your users might jump for joy at this )...
Let me know if you want me to look into that route...
 
Melissa Petersen
Signature Plastics LLC

So, that answers a lot of what was said above but I'll reiterate.

She's got a request for a quote with one all orange key, one all blue, and the rest white... all of them on black. I've no interest in running white keys sorry guys.

Judging by our designs, nothing we are asking is too detailed for pad or sublimation printing.

Since all white isn't an option for sublimation keys, I was thinking all blue on black or all orange, but I would prefer blue by miles there. I could also see how a light grey turns out, I'll ask about all of those options.

Since the prices are lower than I'd ever dreamed per set, I'm okay with driving up the costs of these a bit by doing sublimation but as long as its reasonable and the majority want that.

I'm about to pass out so after I respond to her email I'm going to go nap. I'll add to this later on.

[F u r u y á]

I don't think that the colors require much precision (as long as they're not too off), so dye sublimation on PBT looks promising (and hopefully the prices too).

[Quarzac]

I have to agree with the blue on black subs, as long as it is light Portal blue, not like a practically invisible navy. I like that idea. Probably more durable than pads, and would look good with a board with white on black caps. I'd still like a doubleshot for at least one (because I don't own any yet), but I'd be OK with all subs. I also like the idea of lower prices.

[dorkvader]

I think you sholud drop all the non-doubleshottable keys from the order.

That, or change it to the esc + 2 awesome portal keys idea. I think that was the best anyway.

[Ragnorock]

Yeah, I was thinking a visible "Portal Blue" on black for all of the logos if we do sublimation. Sublimation printing does not wear off ever to my knowledge. If we do sublimation, we should do all of them since it might look odd. I haven't had a response from Melissa yet so we'll see.

[F u r u y á]

2 portal keys gogog :dance: :roll:

Anyone else would like them in white background?

[hashbaz]

+1 for two keys with guy falling into/out of a blue/orange portal

[Ragnorock]

My face when we can do several colors on a single key: ^.^

My face when I look at the cost being more than doubled for both pad printing and sublimation: 0.o

My face when sublimation on black keys isn't possible: D:

My face when I struggle to comprehend the ridiculous number of options we have: :S

Teaser pic:

[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 27021[/ATTACH]

What do guys? Basically everything that I wanted out of this group buy is sortof disappearing. I like the idea of blue keys with multicolored legends though. I had the idea that we could do a great deal more of the keys and let everyone pick and choose which ones they want on their keyboard or do one of the original ideas of the function row plus the 9 keys from print screen to page down. Or perhaps arrow keys using the going into and out of the blue and orange portals.

[tr4656]

My face when we can do several colors on a single key: ^.^

My face when I look at the cost being more than doubled for both pad printing and sublimation: 0.o

My face when sublimation on black keys isn't possible: D:

My face when I struggle to comprehend the ridiculous number of options we have: :S

Teaser pic:

(Attachment Link) 27021[/ATTACH]

What do guys? Basically everything that I wanted out of this group buy is sortof disappearing. I like the idea of blue keys with multicolored legends though. I had the idea that we could do a great deal more of the keys and let everyone pick and choose which ones they want on their keyboard or do one of the original ideas of the function row plus the 9 keys from print screen to page down. Or perhaps arrow keys using the going into and out of the blue and orange portals.

If we can choose which one we wanted, that would be cool. The price is more expensive now though?

[Quarzac]

I don't really care for the sublimated keys after seeing them. The colors aren't very crisp, and I kinda want black keys. Regardless of what happens, I'll still be up for a set through. I'd like to see some pad-printed black samples though.

[keyboardlover]

I actually like the look of the dye subbed keys a lot. How much are they now?

[Urglifast]

I have an idea for what you could do for this, i'll do a quick mock up in paint when i get home from work and let the masters do their mad Photoshop work after.

eh, i got too lazy to really do any work...but you combine these images so that you have half a guy going into one portal, half coming out the other one.  you obviously make them one color, and if you fiddle with the portal thickness (because all you have to do is make it look like a portal...and you don't want it obscuring your man, because he's the same color)

[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 27026[/ATTACH]

[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 27027[/ATTACH]

[Arkonos]

No black background, no sale for me (except a red esc key)
Far too many colours there, my otaku KB ain't a clown.

[Arkonos]

No black background, no sale for me (except a red esc key)
Far too many colours there, my otaku KB ain't a clown.

[Ragnorock]

Okay so yeah, I feel the same about those colors, obviously she was just demonstrating its multicolor capabilities. I'm not going to be ordering anything like those, honestly the only one out of there I like is the red one.

Melissa confirmed my fears here, both Pad Printing and Sublimation printing are more expensive than doubleshots because they've got a lot more equipment for doubleshots.

David-
In general, 2 shot molding is the cheapest option we usually offer as we have the most tooling for it. Pad print and sublimation vary depending on the quantity of keys. Pricing for the sets with only 13 keys is below:
Sublimated keys all the same color - 100 sets @ $18.16 / set
Pad printed keys all the same color with clear coat - 100 sets @ $19.55 / set
 
The same one time charges apply.
 
I asked about 24 key sets if we were to order a bunch more designs, and these are the prices for those.

Pricing for sets of 24 keys is as follows:
Sublimated keys all the same color - 100 sets @ $27.63 / set
Sublimated keys with different colors - 100 sets @ $29.19 / set
 - There is a one-time artwork charge of $40
Pad Printed keys all the same color - 100 sets @ $33.94 / set
Pad Printed keys with different colors - 100 sets @ $35.50 / set
 - There is a one-time artwork/film/cliché charge of $60
 ***pad printed keys will be clear coated with a UV clear coat**

So lol, Sublimated is cheaper than pad printing.

At this point I think it would be best if we just tried to get as many designs to look good as we can and just do doubleshots as planned. We could do a couple of keys with sublimation to get the portal split guy thing, but I'm not super interested in that so I'll let you guys argue over which colors to do there. My thought was a dark blue key with a light blue legend similar to the TL.net key on one, and then the same dark blue with orange on the other.

So at this point:

Pad Printing is out. Period. Well I dunno, but $20 a set is a lot more than everyone was expecting at this point, even if we do get them all white on black there's still a bunch of people that want them to be doubleshots.

Sublimation is still a potential option, but not really my preference because its almost double the cost.

We need to figure out how to simplify a lot of these keys or this is simply just going to fail.

[bavman]

I wouldn't mind paying 18+shipping for the 13 piece sub printed

[ichitz]

daymn. I haven't checked this thread in a while and now it's giving me a headache
I followed SP's rules on the 0.012" thickness. But With the machine following the edges of the graphic instead of the center, 0.012" is actually like.. at least double that probably. Which is huge. I would say over 60% of the icons won't work.

I would be down to getting 1 esc and the 2 end of the portal guys (3keys total) than 13 keys that might become a severe headache for everybody.
Simple is better in my book. But 3 keys prob mean we won't have our premium price anymore.

Let me know what u guys decide and I'll mock up the graphics.

[Quarzac]

Alright, so the goal here is doubleshots. She gave specifics of how small the gaps can be, so now it's just a matter of Ichitz or another artistically skilled person retooling them? What if we were to just eliminate the ones that wouldn't work and instead come up with some Portalesque designs? Something that runs along the same line of stick man in hilarious accidents or the like? Would people be so opposed to that, because it's not taken straight from Portal?

[F u r u y á]

daymn. I haven't checked this thread in a while and now it's giving me a headache
I followed SP's rules on the 0.012" thickness. But With the machine following the edges of the graphic instead of the center, 0.012" is actually like.. at least double that probably. Which is huge. I would say over 60% of the icons won't work.

I would be down to getting 1 esc and the 2 end of the portal guys (3keys total) than 13 keys that might become a severe headache for everybody.
Simple is better in my book. But 3 keys prob mean we won't have our premium price anymore.

Let me know what u guys decide and I'll mock up the graphics.

I'm definetly down for those 3 keys!

Is pure white background a possibility or you guys want only black?

[Ragnorock]

Alright, so the goal here is doubleshots. She gave specifics of how small the gaps can be, so now it's just a matter of Ichitz or another artistically skilled person retooling them? What if we were to just eliminate the ones that wouldn't work and instead come up with some Portalesque designs? Something that runs along the same line of stick man in hilarious accidents or the like? Would people be so opposed to that, because it's not taken straight from Portal?

Yeah, somewhat. There are a lot of things we can do with them to try and make the existing designs work, but yeah, as Ichitz is saying, its going to be a struggle.

I'm going to go find a copy of illustrator and see what I can do. I'm a gfx guy as well I just haven't gotten around to getting illustrator because I've never had a need for it before.

[RColinTaylor]

At this point I would only be down for Doubleshots (I am not made entirely of money) but at the same time I would be down for buying all of the possible doubleshots to be intermixed on my board.

[Clickey]

These are the coolest keys I have ever seen, nice job.

[oneproduct]

The Aperture science and cake (though it should use a color other than light blue I think) sublimated ones look pretty good, the others not so much. While it's a shame we can't do black as the background color for those, if we get more detail it's not all that bad. I'd be up for either sublimated or double shot.