For Geekhackers by Geekhackers.What is GeekHackers.org?Geekhackers is mkawa’s community-driven and community-centric retail entity. It is a fully registered business, located in California, USA. Geekhackers sells and has sold primarily tools, specialty chemicals, geekhack novelty keys, and various other items. Although Geekhackers is not a non-profit federal entity, its mission is:
First, to help promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education via tool kits, materials kits, and novel keyboard products that highlight the limits of manufacturing technology (for example, overmolded polycarbonate and ABS keycaps, silver alloy/zinc superalloy coated keycaps, and more).
Second, Geekhackers aims to build a "nest egg" for geekhack.org. If there were to be a black swan event (such as what we now call "the rootworm incident"), Geekhackers' aims to be ready to step in with money to recover service and an orderly forum as quickly as humanly possible.
In order to achieve these two missions, Geekhackers, first, does its best not to make money year-over-year. Profits from individual sales are reinvested into the retail outlet and into the community. Note that the book-keeping here gets a bit messy, as Geekhackers must spend on inventory, community labor, and return of initial and supporting investments by the business owner (namely one mkawa).
Note that despite being a non-profit, because of the second mission statement, Geekhackers also collects donations collected by the donation links on the forum.
Who is behind GeekHackers.org?The main force behind GeekHackers.org is mkawa. However, many community members have helped Geekhackers projects come to fruition, including but hardly limited to: Cptbadass (who designed the original solder spool), Melvang (who did the vast majority of mechanical work on the workholders), jdcarpe (who has contributed multiple engineering drawings for the titanium sheet metal projects), photoelectric (who consults on Krytox formulations), Binge (who helps support the mold and casters in the community), Boilermaker (who donated fulfillment of the first year of novelty keycaps), and many many more.
Will there ever be an actual GeekHackers.org webpage?Yes, finally!
The Geekhackers retail front is at
http://www.geekhackers.org/The Geekhackers youtube channel is at
http://www.youtube.com/geekhackinWhat Projects and Services is GeekHackers.org working on?- Custom pressure and/or vacuum circuits. The focus lately has been on casting and molding rigs that can be more or less guaranteed to be _safe_ ways to cast resins in silicone rubber molds. mkawa builds the circuit in-situ and ships it nearly whole to buyers. Please be aware that mkawa does not source cheap, unreliable parts in any position and hence his pricing is necessarily higher than a trip to harbor freight (PLEASE DO NOT BUY HFT PRESSURE OR VACUUM PRODUCTS, THEY ARE WELL KNOWN TO INJURE AND/OR KILL WHEN, NOT IF THEY MALFUNCTION). One of his major goals in this is to keep people safe, so if you are using an unsafe rig but maybe don't have a huge budget, please feel free to give mkawa a ring anyway.
- Specialty chemicals for cast and mold. Once you start playing with casting and molding, you will see that there are several issues: mold lifetime, ease of removing a cast item from a mold, and various other polymer compatibility issues. mkawa can offer solutions to many of these issues that have been tested by the casters on the forum due to my supplier connections.
- Higher-end solder stations from Edsyn. mkawa can source most of Edsyn's product line at a small to substantial discount from list price, depending on item. Please PM if you're interested to speak with mkawa about application, budget, etc. His view is that Edsyn's line is _almost_ complete; there is something for every budget and skill level (_except_ for a first step 230v iron, but he is working on that!!).
- ABS printed prototypes on the Geekhackers Makerbot Replicator 2X (aka SmallFry's Bot). This works best if you have cad that is ready to go, but mkawa can work with you to design for the printer if you have cad in design.
- Limited soldering work/rework. mkawa has looked extensively at the TRiK debounce issue and believe i have a fix that requires access to the board. This goes for any version of the board. He doesn't really offer a general soldering service, as there are plenty of options in the community in that regard, but he may do some higher difficulty SMT construction en masse at some point.
- Custom powdercoating via our powdercoater, Rainbow Paint and Blast, in Iowa. Collectively, we own about 20lbs of powder, now resident with the resident powdercoating genius at RPB: Tammi. She is awesome and can paint pretty much anything to look freaking amazing. Check out the Geekhackers Panavise 301 GB to see some of her work.
- In addition to the projects/services listed above, CaptainBadAss has been trying to find machine shops willing to work with our community. He has also helped design the solder holders that mkawa was printed. UPDATE: we have two machine shops who work with our community, with a third likely to come. PM for contact information.
CPTBadAss has added the links for the 3D printing thread, mkawa's second soldering kit IC, GeekHack/TechKeys caps, and sorborthane landing pads IC below:
3D printing thread
Learn to Solder Kits Part 2 and the refresh here, now a kit without the irl here
Sorborthane Landing Pads
GeekHack Jan/Feb 2014 pack
Geekhackers Product Availability and Resellers- CtrlAltStore:
- Krytox One Keyboard lube kits @ TBD
OriginativeCo:
- Krytox One Keyboard lube kits @ REMOVED. Originative is no longer a Geekhackers reseller.
If you have any questions, please contact mkawa. 
