Growing a company that sells miniature construction supplies to $17k a month

Re:Growing a company that sells miniature construction suppl... by castis on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @10:18AM (#16430026)

Most of these keycap sets are kinda pricey, and this company is apparently doing pretty well.

https://pimpmykeyboard.com/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Growing a company that sells miniature construction suppl... by sleepybrett on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @10:52AM (#16430292)

This is the customer facing business for a plastics factory that specializes in keycaps called Signature Plastics. They've been one of two manufacturers of note in the custom keycap group buys of the last little while (GMK in germany being the other). Their production backlog right now is apparently pretty long.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Growing a company that sells miniature construction suppl... by stryk on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @10:44AM (#16430236)

This kind of thing seems perfect for group buys like massdrop, etc. Low production runs of these have got to be expensive. after all, they need to create the design, molds, form them, QA (hopefully), etc. Honestly that much money for some little plastic squares kinda makes me do a double-take, even though I realize why they cost what they do.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Growing a company that sells miniature construction suppl... by sleepybrett on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @11:03AM (#16430387)

Most of the time there aren't that many custom molds (they are expensive!). There are generally only a few ways caps get made. Most expensive is "Double Shot", two separate colors of plastic is used, first the legend is molded in one color (kinda built on a grid of plastic) then it's placed in the full keycap mold and the "background" plastic is shot into the mold filling all the empty space. The legends on these keycaps obviously cannot fade or wear off. Other methods include "pad printing", the legends are painted on (with a coat of sealent) (if you look at your caps and kinda see a shimmer around your legends, it's probably pad printed). Pad printed legends can be worn off over time. Finally dye-sublimation, a printing method that penetrates the plastic a few nanometers. These legends generally don't wear off ( The popular Apple Extended II keyboard is dyesubbed, I have one that I used for several years on a quadra then converted for use with usb and the legends are still sharp, though the plastic has yellowed ), however dyesub can only create legends that are darker than the keycap plastic.

The companies that make keycaps have molds for the profiles they make. GMK has the original Cherry molds (medium height caps with cylindrical indentions, Signature Plastics has a few profiles including Retro looking SA (Tall caps with spherical indentations, each row a different sculpt that gives it a gentle dish when looked at from the side), DSA (flat profile, each row the same with a spherical indentation), DSS (A medium profile generally dished with spherical indentation, DCS (a medium profile with cylindrical indentation), and G20 (a flat profile with no indentation).

So generally when you put together a custom keycap set, you pick a profile, if you want double shot legends there might be some extra molds to make, but those are pretty pricy (I think I heard about 6k a pop). If you go with dyesub you have a lot of legend freedom, but you are limited to dark legends on lighter caps.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Growing a company that sells miniature construction suppl... by Animats on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @03:29PM (#16432687)

Most expensive is "Double Shot", two separate colors of plastic is used, first the legend is molded in one color (kinda built on a grid of plastic) then it's placed in the full keycap mold and the "background" plastic is shot into the mold filling all the empty space. The legends on these keycaps obviously cannot fade or wear off.

Yes. HP calculators had that.

There's another way for small volume. Laser engrave the legend with a CNC laser cutter. Then brush on laser marking powder, which is very similar to printer toner. Rerun the engraving pass at very low power, hitting the same spots just engraved. Power has to be low, just enough to melt and seal the toner, not vaporize it. Then brush off any remaining powder. This is good for cover plates with legends, signs, and such. The letters are slightly below surface level, so they tend not to wear off too fast.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Growing a company that sells miniature construction suppl... by Double_a_92 on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @10:43AM (#16430220)

How are they not getting replaced by chinese manufacturers? From a naive point of view those don't seem to hard to manufacture.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Growing a company that sells miniature construction suppl... by ljosa on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @11:02AM (#16430378)

They are, but from the low end. Often the quality is not quite there: the colors are off, the legends and not properly aligned, the plastic is warped, the keys not quite aligned, and so on. It is probably because the production runs are so small that the only way to make a decent profit is to order a blind production run and ship it out no matter what it looks like. Higher-quality low-cost options are starting to appear as this new market matures.

In contrast, the group buys in the enthusiast community are works of love, with multiple rounds of checks and adjustments to get it right. Sometimes facilitators like Massdrop force projects out the door because of cost even though the creator of the design wants to do more rounds of tweaking are necessary, and it shows. (Example: the recent /dev/tty keycap set.)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Growing a company that sells miniature construction suppl... by whywhywhywhy on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @12:53PM (#16431381)

They are, XDA keycap form factor is from a Chinese factory IIRC and is kinda derivative of DSA caps which comes out of Signature Plastics.

Seems to be quality issues with every XDA run so far though. Keyboard fanatics drop a good amount of money on these sets so quality is extremely important in such a small and passionate market.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Growing a company that sells miniature construction suppl... by emddudley on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @04:51PM (#16433291)

Jelly Key makes artisan keycaps by hand. They are based in Vietnam.

https://www.jellykey.com/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Growing a company that sells miniature construction suppl... by bpicolo on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @10:49AM (#16430273)

Some are, some aren't (e.g. KeyCool). Lots of these have low production counts.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Growing a company that sells miniature construction suppl... by sleepybrett on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @11:04AM (#16430394)

Maxkey, Tai Hao and others in the chinese market are making their presence felt, but generally the quality just isn't there for the enthusiast community.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Growing a company that sells miniature construction suppl... by nerdponx on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @11:43AM (#16430738)

Tai Hao is really coming into their own with the Cubic keycap profile. They're doing for keycaps what Kailh is doing for switches.

[ Parent | on HN ]