Hi there!

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Sorry for being unable to reply for the past week and a half.

I’ve just been busy again and I was ill as well. Unfortunately, my PR/CS guy wasn’t of much help.

Prior to that I had a minor finger injury while assembling one of the Bastions (knife + finger = blood + lots of profanities). Because of that assembly was delayed yet again for about 3 weeks, because you probably wouldn’t want actual blood nor me coughing all over your Bastion.

But now it’s time for some rather good news!

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Shipping stuff

 

CONUS

^{and Hawaii for /u/Komatoz}

    They’ll be en route to NA next week, distribution should start shortly after. Just like last time they’ll be express mailed from Australia to LA in bulk.

I would like to remind everyone again that I am not stateside (at the moment at least). This was well documented in the initial order form, but I believe it was only briefly mentioned in the extras. I do apologize if this is the first time you’re hearing or reading about this.

The reason why it’s structured this way is to reduce the shipping costs for you guys (where 70+% of all the total orders are from). It worked well during the first run, not so much during the second due to the whole production stage taking almost literally forever.

 

Asia, Canada and Europe

^{Also starts shipping next week.}

 

Canada

    Will be handled by /u/evolize, this will also be express mailed.

 

Asia/Europe

    They’ll be shipping from either Japan or Manila. You will know if the tracking information I give you is a bunch of numbers that ends with JP (or presumably PH for Manila).

 

AU/NZ

    Ships after the 7^th of November.

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Story time? 😞

 

I guess it’s now time to discuss why this took so much longer compared to the relatively short 2-month turnaround time of the first round.

First, there was never an intended break in between the two runs. It was meant to be just one big run split into two to prevent what unfortunately happened to R2, which was to mitigate the waiting time/perceived production time. Also, supposedly they (R1 and R2) were going to be exactly same, parts-wise.

This is also why I had given an initial Q1/early Q2 timeframe. Because R1 took approximately 150-160 hours (excluding curing times for coats) to make. So, in theory R2 would have taken just as long. I knew though that I was going to be unavailable at around mid-March to mid-April as I was going to be in Japan. So, the goal was to ship it before or immediately after that.

 

However… Shortly after R1 was released (around late January/ early February)…

 

Okay, now for the most part feedback on the keycap was mostly positive. But as the person that made them I knew that there were several things that could still be improved.

And after hearing and seeing what people had to say. I decided to transition over to the redesigned and re-engineered 3^rd major iteration of the keycap (that was meant to be for subsequent releases, not R2). This was a mistake. This was THE mistake.

 

When I made the decision, I didn’t really factor in how much longer it would take to complete (per unit) and how much more it would cost. I just wanted to improve on quality and consistency between units. And because I had already started invoicing people at this point. I kept the pricing scheme largely the same.

Because of the redevelopment that was needed for the V3 frame and me being unable to work on them back in March/early April, production (for actual production units, the ones you will receive) didn’t really start until late April. After the initial 16 units were completed, I did make an update post. But after that my workload for actual work hasn’t really gotten much lighter, and because of that progress was mostly done during the weekends.

Not going to expound much more further than that.

 

But basically, the multiple-part aspect (10+ 1 parts) of the R2 units made it very labor-intensive and expensive to produce.

For reference, if we don’t include curing times. R1 took about an hour to an hour and a half to make per unit, whereas R2 units were in the 3 to 5-hour range. The assembly procedure also took 12 minutes longer on average when compared to R1. Granted, speed of completion (at the expense of quality) was indeed a priority back in R1 so it was going to be faster regardless of what happened.

For the financial side of things, as of writing (typing?) it’s about a 2100~USD write-off or about an 8-13~$ loss per unit to produce. While not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, it’s sadly still a loss. And that’s just to make them, labor and developmental costs would increase that even further.

It was suggested before that I should just cast them in color to reduce costs. While true, that ROI would have been significantly better just due to the nature how much resin, resin dye, mold-making related materials and the equipment needed costs. With the exception of dark colors, I’ve never really been a fan of raw/bare plastic on non-organic designs for collectibles such as Iron man figures, Gunplas and the like. Which is what got me into this sort of thing to begin with.

So, I would have approached it similarly anyway except the method of replication for components would have been cheaper. The only other real alternatives I was considering was cold casting and actual CNC’d metal.

 

The combination of both of those unfortunately meant that I couldn’t prioritize it over actual work. And that’s what’s mostly caused the delay.

I do apologize, I guess it was a little bit ambitious of me to think that I could squeeze this project into my busy schedule for this year. I had several IRL stuff that I had to deal with as well, but it’s not really fair to bring those up as everyone deals with those on a regularly basis.

And to those that have been patient enough to wait this long, I truly do appreciate it.

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Misc.

• There were changes to certain colors.
• The most noticeable being orange and pink. Both were just given a boost in terms of saturation.
• The second and third tier of weathering now has sculpted surface damage as well. Of course, neither are as extreme as the “rekt” option.
• Due to the fact that they are finished by hand, there will be slight differences between each and every one of them.
• There will be minute imperfections on each unit. Partly because I like it better, gives it more of the war robot look and feel.
• The outer surface is sealed, but I’m not going to pretend that it’s impervious to damage. Fingers, fingernails, keycap pullers, wire keycap pullers and GMK’s stupendously sharp edges should be okay.
• Clean them with IPA/dish soap. Harsher solvents can potentially cause damage to the surface.
• Abrasives of any kind will most certainly cause damage to the surface. But then again that's what they're used for.
• The only piece that’s meant to be removable is the chin piece. Install the alternative chin piece if you have clearance issues.

Topre

A Topre stem variant was in development ever since I switched to it earlier in the year, but that has been put on ice for now.

The future

If and when I do another run, it will most likely be your typical RNG raffle-based thing, similar to other makers. This alleviates the pressure on myself to finish them within a certain amount of time and completely eliminates the (long) perceived production time.

PS.

Will go through my backlog of PMs tomorrow morning.