~2 years waiting for the keycaps! Finally arrived this week.Submitted by Human133 t3_10lkxc6 in MechanicalKeyboards
Benbenb1 t1_j5y7ol7 wrote
Why in the world do keycaps take that long to make and ship?
Like from the perspective of someone who’s mildly interested in mk, that just seems like a long ass time for some plastic.
Human133 OP t1_j5ycred wrote
It's ridiculous. I just wanted to try GMK keycaps. It's pretty and quality is good but nothing groundbreaking or worth the wait times.
Benbenb1 t1_j5ydm2h wrote
Glad you like it, ‘cause it would suck if you didn’t.
From my time as a lurker on this subreddit, I feel like seeing these waiting times for these keyboards/caps/etc are more common than usual and are pretty ridiculous imo.
CT-96 t1_j6081ei wrote
This hobby is really strange about this stuff. In pretty much any other niche hobby (I'm a longboarder for example), paying upfront and then waiting 2 years for fulfilment would get you boycotted and most of your orders cancelled (or just run out of business because no one ordered in the first place). You actually need to have a physical product to show people and not just a render.
GRSimon t1_j60mzlr wrote
Not defending it, but part of the reason is back in the day GMK never did group buys, and the idea of it happening seemed so out of reach. People on GeekHack forked out $$$ just to buy tooling to imitate GMK's Cherry font, a 'rare' now common red GMK escape key once sold for hundreds of dollars, finding GMK keycaps on Classifieds was rare.
Benbenb1 t1_j60knka wrote
Exactly my thoughts on this. Literally any other hobby and it just would not work.
I feel like it’s due to the fact that enough people try to justify their (respectfully) dumbass purchases, that (is also in part due to the the normalcy of this practice from companies) takes YEARS to receive.
But you know…Clickity clack. And those THOCK key caps.
fronteir t1_j60pwos wrote
It initially started when the hobby was niche enough that groupbuys were pretty much the only way to get the factory time to do enough items to make it economical.
Nowadays it keeps happening because a) its a win for the designer/company, they get immediate payment with no risk of not selling their product if they just did it in stock b) there are still smaller designers who wouldn't be able to get their designs made without the GB model
I am hopeful that with GMK leadtimes being consistently insane, and now with KAT being blown up due to factory covid issues, that people will start to wisen up? But the FOMO in this hobby is real and its a fucking shame
[deleted] t1_j60nbz4 wrote
There are loads of really nice in stock sets if you don't want to wait for a group buy.
CT-96 t1_j60vmj5 wrote
And that's exactly what I do. I buy in stock stuff instead because that is a more consumer friendly business practice.
grandmoto t1_j5zuu83 wrote
Makes me feel bad hopping on the extras and getting them in 2 days
jh_2719 t1_j66mff0 wrote
Don't feel bad. That's the smart thing to do.
Gummyrabbit t1_j5ycghd wrote
Their employees built the keycaps one molecule at a time.
penatbater t1_j5ykn24 wrote
Color matching takes an ungodly and sometimes unreasonable amount of time. Idk if it was KAT Mizu or GMK Red Dragon that was color-matched 3 or more times, and each time it took like 3-6 months turnaround time. Plus covid. Plus something wrong happening in the factory, etc etc. Plus, idk anymore ._.
SpiralOutLL t1_j5zmb7t wrote
Ok, but this was a freakin R2, shouldn't color matching be already sorted out?
penatbater t1_j60ssss wrote
Gmk red dragon isn't r2, neither is Kat mizu afaik. Kat mizu had a diff mfg.
CT-96 t1_j608myl wrote
How the actual fuck does it take 3-6 months to print a keycap set and look at it to figure out if it's the right colour or not? That shit should take maybe 10 minutes after printing which itself should only take a couple hours depending on the method used.
penatbater t1_j60slnk wrote
Idk man. But from what I was told and what I inferred, the process basically is the creator asks for samples. Then the mfg makes them and sends to the creator. Then the creator looks at them, says that so and so color does not match their specs, the font is too weird, the color bleeds, there's some issue with the whatever, etc. Then the mfg does it all over again. And everytime takes a long time coz there's probably a bunch of the mfg's own orders + a hundred other GBs that's also doing the same thing +the order fulfillment of another hundred GBs.
dDesu t1_j5yecp4 wrote
From what I'm figuring from other comments around the sub, the machines and tooling required is more specialized just for keycaps.
Judging by how fast this sub grew rapidly around the time of the pandemic, demand would have picked up quite rapidly as well.
I agree those wait times are ridiculous though, and there should be no excuses for it. The demand is there, why isn't production keeping up?
zod000 t1_j5yog5u wrote
The pandemic's effect on production times is excusable, but they didn't get THAT much longer, they have always been obnoxiously long.
daninet t1_j5ygil7 wrote
This is a scaling issue not tooling or machining. Injection molding is literally everywhere and even the crappy mcdonalds toys come with double moulded plastic these days. Also a keycap is like the most barebone simplest shape you can make on such a machine. They could spit out a full 101 keycap set in every 10 second if they wanted to. It is very possible they just play the "premium brand" game and sell cheap plastic while creating demand from shortage and paid ads on every platform.
TheTotalMc t1_j5ynz3k wrote
I believe half of the way comes from trying to match the colors with renders (color matching), which requires manufacturers to make samples and ship them out (a couple weeks per sample), and this goes on until the creator feels like it matches.
daninet t1_j5yv433 wrote
That's also not that hard pantone is literally made for this very purpose and everyone is using it for overseas manufacturing. You order your plastic in pantone xy and since they are looking on the same standard you will get exactly what you asked for. They are also an established business I dont think they still struggle with things like finding a supplier who can make a specified color
FalseBuddha t1_j5znkx7 wrote
That's how it's supposed to work, sure. That's often not how it actually works in the real world.
wankthisway t1_j5zw6p1 wrote
SHOULD, but I doubt that the vast majority are even capable of buying Pantone color books and the associated subscriptions for the colors in programs.
daninet t1_j602c05 wrote
Ok, so tell me this: if they have a setup product with a supplier (they do sell keycaps so they must have) what prevents them to leave the injection moulding machines run... forever? If the demand is so high? These machines are capable of insane output for low cost after they are setup. They simply create demand to keep the prices high. This is a different business strategy, similar to business class airline tickets or exclusive fashion clothes. They only need to sell fraction of the quantity for thousands of percent of markup and they can make more money than a mass manufacturer. This whole system if fed by people on social media overpraising pieces of plastic they waited for years.
TheTotalMc t1_j61fn3p wrote
Well, from what I know (and why GMK has been taking longer and longer), there was a plastic shortage a while back. This, plus the fact that GMK is a large company outside of keycaps (keycaps are a backseat for them and only a very minor amount of their profit) means it’s not their top priority
FalseBuddha t1_j5zn950 wrote
They take your money when all they have is a render because they need your interest free loan to even start the process most vendors have completed before they start selling a product.
Alex_Hanlin t1_j5z9mkr wrote
always buy in stock or second hand, i've gotten every set i've wanted in stock or through r/mechmarket and never had to wait more than a month
pm_me_ur_pharah t1_j616p5d wrote
because the producers are years behind schedule and refuse to expand production or take less orders.
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