The factory is now back from their national holiday break and hopes to resume production soon on the compact cases, foam, and inner assembly steel plates.
I received some PCB material samples from the factories but none was a match. They were on the good but not perfect sound level of the PCBs that already finished production.
I am now in talks with a longstanding US PCB material manufacturer who identified some specific characteristics of the old PCBs from photos I sent them - he will look into this some more this week. It seems like both the PCB substrate and solder mask of the old PCBs may have contributed to the sharp click sound. I asked about a custom vintage style PCB formulation just for this project - with near 1,000 PCB orders this may be possible.
I am still sourcing the special spring material identified by the material analysis lab. It is an old standard that is no longer as widely available in such a small diameter but will hopefully have good news from some wire manufacturers this week.
Sorry for the cell phone photo of the compact cases. They are correctly edged in person.
Yes for this project my desire for an equal or better quality reproduction of the original 4704 Model F is the most important goal, especially since there are nearly $400,000 in orders so far. It can be done internationally and at a lower cost to sell these at the $325 price point. It just has taken a lot longer than expected. I recently heard a saying that applies here - fast, high quality, or at a good cost - but you can only pick two of the three. For some background on some of the issues delaying the project here is a sampling of some of the issues:
https://www.modelfkeyboards.com/4-11-17-major-update-catch-up-how-close-are-we/Pricing may change a little for the final aka second round as raw material prices have increased significantly since last year. Probably a price change of no more than $20 to $30 extra.
The low/custom serial option is a way of supporting the project and skipping several hundred people in line when these keyboards arrive and I start testing them one by one and mailing them out. The standard option still gets you in the early bird round so this option is not required.