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Group Buys and Preorders / Re: Beam Spring 104+SSK+122+62 Reproduction Project! Round 1 now shipping
« Last post by Ellipse on Fri, 17 April 2026, 22:14:42 »Here is a summary of the current status of the Round 2 beam spring keyboards, and a recapitulation of the challenges and timeline considerations for projects like this:
The first batch of Round 2 B104's was just delivered, so those boards will be going out over the next few months. The other Round 2 boards are in production and should be completed in the next few months, then they're traveling on a container ship for two months, then I have to mail them out. Should be later this year now that final production is finishing up. Round 1 beam spring boards started shipping years ago; there is still some remaining stock.
What worries some folks is that there is not an exact date that is guaranteed and that you just go to the product page, see a delivery date, click order, and it ships on that date. Why can't it be like that for these projects?
These are extremely small production runs relative to most products and almost everything is assembled by hand. The production of the tooling took far longer than expected, but it was completed late last year when production began on the B104's that were just delivered.
The hardest part of making something like this is getting the tooling set up and properly dialed in to produce parts that meet specifications; after that you are just limited by certain bottlenecks: the relatively slow production time for parts made by laser cutting and bending like most of the beam spring parts (die cast molds for such enormous cases would have been infeasible). They only have one or two of those laser cutting machines and each of the few thousand parts must be made one at a time (see the project's YouTube channel to see them making parts for this project!). If a machine breaks or starts going off spec they have to stop to retool, which might take a day or a week or longer. The accuracy tolerances are extremely high for these keyboard projects: often +/- 0.1mm. If even one key module hole is off by 1mm by accident for the laser cutter, the whole part must be scrapped because two keys would contact each other.
That is why they don't guarantee that they'll finish by an exact date like some web site saying the products will be back in stock on so-and-so date. The order quantities are far lower than what most factories will accept so we must be grateful that the factories will work with us and maintain the high standards that they have maintained.
Around the time that shipments are delivered from the factory to me, then I become the bottleneck, which is much preferable to waiting for the factory for sure! I am answering hundreds of emails, checking orders, confirming addresses, making updates, confirming stock for each variation compared to what was ordered, gathering the thousands of line items, loading the most recent firmware, and doing the final QC checks including testing every key position and taking apart the keyboards to replace bad modules and other failed or damaged parts. This contributes to the backlog as described in the most recent update on the project website. Believe it or not, some folks think that after they order a shipping label automatically comes out of the printer and all someone has to do is attach the shipping label to the box!
The first batch of Round 2 B104's was just delivered, so those boards will be going out over the next few months. The other Round 2 boards are in production and should be completed in the next few months, then they're traveling on a container ship for two months, then I have to mail them out. Should be later this year now that final production is finishing up. Round 1 beam spring boards started shipping years ago; there is still some remaining stock.
What worries some folks is that there is not an exact date that is guaranteed and that you just go to the product page, see a delivery date, click order, and it ships on that date. Why can't it be like that for these projects?
These are extremely small production runs relative to most products and almost everything is assembled by hand. The production of the tooling took far longer than expected, but it was completed late last year when production began on the B104's that were just delivered.
The hardest part of making something like this is getting the tooling set up and properly dialed in to produce parts that meet specifications; after that you are just limited by certain bottlenecks: the relatively slow production time for parts made by laser cutting and bending like most of the beam spring parts (die cast molds for such enormous cases would have been infeasible). They only have one or two of those laser cutting machines and each of the few thousand parts must be made one at a time (see the project's YouTube channel to see them making parts for this project!). If a machine breaks or starts going off spec they have to stop to retool, which might take a day or a week or longer. The accuracy tolerances are extremely high for these keyboard projects: often +/- 0.1mm. If even one key module hole is off by 1mm by accident for the laser cutter, the whole part must be scrapped because two keys would contact each other.
That is why they don't guarantee that they'll finish by an exact date like some web site saying the products will be back in stock on so-and-so date. The order quantities are far lower than what most factories will accept so we must be grateful that the factories will work with us and maintain the high standards that they have maintained.
Around the time that shipments are delivered from the factory to me, then I become the bottleneck, which is much preferable to waiting for the factory for sure! I am answering hundreds of emails, checking orders, confirming addresses, making updates, confirming stock for each variation compared to what was ordered, gathering the thousands of line items, loading the most recent firmware, and doing the final QC checks including testing every key position and taking apart the keyboards to replace bad modules and other failed or damaged parts. This contributes to the backlog as described in the most recent update on the project website. Believe it or not, some folks think that after they order a shipping label automatically comes out of the printer and all someone has to do is attach the shipping label to the box!
