During the last group buy of colored topre keycaps I notice that a lot of people were buying blank sets for their HHKB because labeled keys wouldnt match up. I missed out on the group buy and when Elite Keyboards had them in stock. While trying to track down a set I found out that within the next month or two more sets will be available. After learning this I contacted WASD Keyboards about doing custom etching on a blank topre keycap set. I was told that with one set it would be very expensive to do because of the testing needed to get the correct laser settings. The other problem that he had was that there may not be enough extra keys to do good enough testing to produce a satisfactory etching.
I came up with the idea of group etching to cut down on cost and have the ability to have enough extra key caps for the testing. Depending on the number of people interested we may have to limit the color of caps to a single color (for testing reasons) and the layout would be kept the same between colors (if there are different ones) to keep down on cost.
Once some interest is shown I will contact WASD and start getting more of the particulars worked out. Like how the caps will be bought, prices for shipping, and pricing on the testing and etching.
The best way would be for the caps to be sent directly to WASD from the seller. Then have WASD etch and ship the keycaps. This way we could keep the number of shipments down, keeping shipping cost down. Though this would be the best method it would require a large commitment from WASD which I dont know yet if he would be willing to do.
