Hi there, and welcome to our monthly status update!
TL;DR: We’ve assembled 500 PCB panels, and the parts for the first batch of 2,000 UHKs are being pre-assembled. Right after pre-assembly, the final assembly of the keyboards will proceed. We plan to ship the first batch (ordered before 2017-07-13) of 2,000 UHK from March to May. Closely after the first batch, we expect the ship the second batch (ordered on or after 2017-07-13) starting from June. We’ll ship every non-module items together on a per-backer basis.
Regarding the estimated shipping dates, please note that we can’t precisely tell you when we will ship your order because we have a multi-step manufacturing process in place, and there are some variables involved. As a general rule of thumb, the sooner you ordered, the sooner we’ll deliver. We’ll send out a shipping notification email when the time comes. Also, we can’t move you ahead in the queue because it’d be unjust towards earlier backers.
Price Increases
Effective immediately, we are raising the prices of the following items:
- UHK: $240
- Modules: $60 per piece (no bundles anymore)
- Extra UHK keycaps: $25
- Extra UHK case: $25
As we elaborated in our previous update, the cause of this raise is the heavy weakening of the US dollar. We don’t plan to raise prices again until delivering all the pre-orders of both batch 1 and batch 2, at which point we’ll raise them by about 10%, which will be the final prices.
500 PCB Panels Assembled
Shortly after our previous update, we started assembling the first 500 PCB panels.
Compared to the pilot run batch of 50 panels, this was a 10x increase. Fortunately, everything went smoothly, and 500 out of 500 panels passed the test.
I was in the factory and flashed every one of these panels. I had no choice, because our custom flashing procedure and software is not sufficiently user-friendly yet. I found this experience to be extremely valuable, because now I can not only make this more user friendly in order to be able to delegate it, but also faster and more robust.
Pre-assembling UHK Parts
Currently, the parts of the 2,000 UHKs in batch 1 are being pre-assembled. After pre-assembly, we’ll be assembling and shipping every non-module orders from March to May, on a weekly basis.
Powder-coated palm rest base plates
Colored cases
All things considered, we’re proceeding well with pre-assembly, although colored cases gave us a hard time. As it turned out, the coloring agent makes plastic more rigid, and it resulted in several broken cases when pushing the threaded inserts into the plastic. For the time being, we preheat the inserts before pushing them into the cases which solves the issue. In the future, we plan to slightly tweak the mold to avoid this extra step.
Another challenging aspect of the upcoming assembly process is the staggering amount of SKUs. Currently we offer 2 layouts * 5 case colors * 4 keycap printing options * 6 key switches = 240 variations, probably making the UHK the most physically configurable keyboard on the market.
Internally, we have to track every UHK to make sure that the correct options are implemented during the various assembly stages. This is vastly more complicated than offering a handful product versions, and I had no choice but to develop a custom production management and fulfillment system to deal with this situation. Some parts of the system are already working, and I’ll be focusing on this in the near future to make production and fulfillment a smooth ride.
While dealing with production, we haven’t forgotten about Agent and the firmware and we keep improving them. We released new versions recently, and you’re welcome to grab the latest Agent and flash the bundled firmware to your UHK. Also feel free to check out the Agent changelog and firmware changelog. We’ll keep making incremental improvements until we smash every bug and make the user experience heavenly smooth.
UHK Photos
A while back, we only had photos of our prototypes, which didn’t do justice to the final product, so we took a few photos of a production UHK. We’re quite excited about these photos, and would like to show you some of them below.
And that’s it! Right now, our primary focus is the delivery of batch 1 and, closely after that, batch 2 orders. After that, we’ll focus on the modules. In true UHK style, we’ll be keeping you updated.
Thank you for reading this update, and talk to you on 2018-03-15!
Painful to watch the Delivery Date keep fluctuating, but then I read the updates like this one and just smile. 500 out of 500 boards passing must mean you guys are doing something right. :) I can't wait to put this baby to good use. My current 60% mechanical and my old Microsoft Ergo are getting nervous.
Thanks for the nice words! Mad props go to our PCBA contractor. They're directly responsible for the 0% defect rate.
Do I get that right, that you are delivering batch1 and batch2 and afterwards the "batch3" when you're done with the modules?
Or do those get first their UHK and in a second delivery the modules?
Just because I've ordered two modules, the one for the left side and the one with the trackpoint (Thinkpad style) on the right one, and I wouldn't have any problem starting to work with the UHK _without_ the modules, but to wait longer just to have the modules from the start is a bit hard... depends of course on the fact how long it will take to produce the modules. ;)
Yes, we'll manufacture further batches after we're done with the modules. We'll actually have stock after shipping the pre-orders of batch 2.
We'll ship non-module items first - every non-module item on a per backer basis, and then the modules in another shipment.
Totally agree with your thinking. You shouldn't wait for the modules, so we'll ship everything else first. ;)
Wow...
I'm not sure if the cost for shipping the modules is significant...but when we order we ordered the keyboard and modules on one shipping...But you're saying you guys are going to ship it in two separate shippings???
Wow again.... if this is true - this is what customer service is.
For a small company to bare the cost for something like this, I have faith this company is going to go far.
Kudos for any work you guys are doing. Can't wait for mine!!!!
Hi Jon! The shipping costs are significant, but we can take them. Our primary goal is to make you guys happy, and it's clearly our fault that the modules will only be ready later, so it's the least we can do. Thanks so much for your support!
You are now in the fase to fix the problems with manufacturing, But that also seems to get up and running, so you are picking up steam. Keep on going :-)
I REALLY like the dark-red colored casings ....
Keep going! But I can't wait to get the trackball module "clicked" onto my UHK :-)
Thanks EdbO! Looking forward to work on the modules soon! :)
I would be cool if once a week or so you dropped a note on Twitter like "Now shipping to somebody who ordered on Oct 1, 2015", so we can tell when you're getting close to our orders.
Excellent idea! We'll do that.
+1
+1
After a couple months of use, it now accompanies me to the workplace every day. A real pleasure, very easy to carry around.
I hope others will have as must of a blast as I am having with it.
On the other hand it was painful to customize the keycaps, but I'm done with it for now.
Thank you for delivering such a product.
So glad to hear you're satisfied with your keyboard! Thanks for your support and great feedback!
Sorry about your experience regarding Agent. According to your feedback, you were mainly having problems with the mapping of non-US characters. We'll consider making Agent more intuitive in this respect, but solving this correctly is surprisingly hard, because USB keyboards send scancodes to the host, not characters. Other than this issue, according to my knowledge, Agent is already a lot more advanced than other configuration utilities of multi-layer keyboards. That doesn't mean we won't push it further because we absolutely will, but I wanted to mention it.
Hmmm a bit of a misunderstanding here :) I said keycaps as in physical key caps, not key bindings ; The agent is just fine despite its quirks, the problem you have mentioned was pretty minor for my own consumption (but may be more problematic for other users).
Ah, totally misunderstood you! :) Thanks for clarifying!