The only concession I am prepared to make here, is that the designer (and GB runner) may be (and usually is) responsible for getting other worldwide vendors on board, and they may not choose wisely, but if there is a problem with one particular vendor, it doesn't necessarily follow that the entire GB is a car crash and buyers elsewhere may not even have a problem at all. Then in that instance, it's that one particular vendor that created an issue, not the designer.

There are just too many variables to say the designer (usually the person who advertises the GB and generates the interest through posts and social media awareness) can't always be the person who is to blame if something totally out of their control happens. From a legal point of view, the person ultimately responsible if it comes to refunds etc. would be the vendor you "bought" them from, and as most GBs have multiple vendors, even that is not as straightforward as you seem to be suggesting.

I think it's also important to remember that some of these people complaining about GB queue times joined when it was already well known the queues were long, and continued to join - the OP here was still joining GBs in March 2022, it's not like the queues will magically go from 2 years to 3 months - but it is fashionable to complain about GMK right now

Yeah, 105 is not going to work great for the stabs. The point of lubricating stabs is mostly to silence them (the place where the wire goes into the hole) and less so to make them smooth (lubing the places where the two plastic parts rub). You could use 105 for the plastic on plastic part, but it’s not going to do a great job since it’s so thin. As far as the grease on the wires, dielectric grease or 205 is good. I actually picked up some XHT-BDZ G1.5 from divinikey for the wires, it’s suuuuper thick kinda like automotive grease (only a hundred times the price) and it works great if you don’t overdo it.

Interesting...

Yep, see where you are coming from on that. Has been an interesting convo.

Nice to be able to have a rational talk on internet without it devolving into shouting :)

Thanks

Yeah but zeal had prototypes for the Xeno, and your directly arguing that this hobby doesn’t do that. So again my point stands. I’m not happy with delays either but currently there is no reasonable other option for extremely niche hobbies, and your solutions was impractical.

Again, deadlines being missed are almost always on the fault of the manufacturer.

Take GMK or example: their main revenue comes from commercial manufacturing, not this hobby. So their involvement in the custom keycap space is essentially that of a “side gig.” Their responsibility of upholding a groupbuy’s timeline is not a high priority of theirs. The ways in which they choose to neglect their obligation to their group buy customers isn’t a problem a runner has any control over.

As for why runners keep choosing to use problematic manufacturers is a whole other problem: the scarcity of manufacturers to begin with. There are only a handful, so the hobby at large is somewhat left to choose the lesser of two evils in a lot of cases.

Most importantly, running a group buy costs a huge investment of time and money, and it will be YEARS before you see any money made from it. While I don’t know the exact % of the profits that will go to the runner, I do think they should be compensated appropriately. Remember that most organizers are doing this on their own dime, and many don’t make it to production to begin with.

Fair enough lol

A have a friend who gives me crap for preferring linears over tactile. They just feel better for FPS games.

I do, and it sound like you like to take assumptions without a background.
I was attending Zeal's only keyboard GB - Xeno. It wasn't the only GB I was/am attending to and I won't take shit from a person that just can't understand that somebody can be pissed about something that he can cope with.

Yeah I don’t know where you’re joining group buys that don’t do prototypes or have proof of concept like gmk’s history of caps. And if you join them that’s your own fault. You keep bringing up zeal but their switches all have samples and they prototype their stabilizers. So to be completely honest it sounds like you have no clue what you are talking about.

Try alps

>I only care about a name behind a GB and I don't care who the person works with.

But that's unfair. Like I said, you may be blaming someone for something that has literally nothing to do with them. Seems to me like you just want someone to blame, and don't really care who. Seriously now, how can you blame a designer if a manu's lead times slip after the designer and lead vendor have done everything correctly? Conversely, how can you blame a manu, if the designer is an idiot and did all his renders using hex codes?

I am getting the impression that despite you saying you have been around a while, you don't actually know much about running a GB. Am I correct in this assumption?

https://preview.redd.it/dm6e9flkhl2a1.png?width=1282&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=792fc1dc24dcbdbc3a0c4abda1f405a54059cf3d

Can confirm: downvoted to hell here, got actual help elsewhere

r/mechanicalkeyboards is for posting your “unique” Tofu clones and/or keycaps you ordered three years ago. Leave your humor or troubleshooting at the door.

PS Turns out applying solder with a firehose is wrong. Who knew? /s

Really nice aesthetic.

Fair enough. I'd like to see any name of a chinese manufacturer here :D And what difference would it make for us. I only care about a name behind a GB and I don't care who the person works with. I compare it to literally everything else that I've ever bought, starting from iphone, ending on the village fair smoked ham. I am buying a product from one company/person and I don't care how much it fucked up it's work during process of making the thing I want to buy.
I just require professionalism from everybody, especially if they take my money.

There's way more to designing a keycap set than making some renders. It wasn't the reason I said that anyway. This guy thinks he has the solution, and is telling us it's easy, (just get a business loan LOL), so why doesn't he just keep quiet, and get on with revolutionising everything and make a ton of money and transform this hobby?

Because it's easy to come out with bullshit, and even believe that bullshit when you have no idea what you are talking about.

Yea still available on Konostore.

Really good

I love linears and can recognize their differences, but that won't stop me making memes ;)

Thanks for this comment.
I get you point that it may not be a runner's fault. Nevertheless, why is missing a deadline a rule? There are many runners that are doing a second or third GB and they still have the same problems.

Maybe some GB runner should speak up about their real profit? I wonder what is a percent of profit from an average group buy (I am sure we won't ever get an answer). I wonder if there is a space for improvement of a quality.
I bet no GB runner does it pro publico bono ;)

I like this compact 75 layout! Do you know the board name?

XD maybe both!

>I'm taking about a person who had an idea, started the whole thing and is responsible for the undertaking.

You can't really blame the designer for everything. If a manufacturer's lead times slip after the designer and vendor have submitted everything, then it's the manufacturer's fault. If delays are down to colour samples not being correct for example, that is nearly always the designer's fault. It depends what exactly caused the delay. It's not as simple as blaming the designer for everything, or the manufacturer for everything, or the lead vendor. Each GB that failed to meet a deadline needs to be assessed individually.

So... like I said, you can't blame one for the shortcomings of the other. For someone who has been around a while, you seem to be oversimplifying this.

"tweaked the colours"

But that isn't what is happening, the issue with clones is they are using the exact colours, logo novelties, and the name branding, in some case they even advertise them as "GMK" keycaps. There is a big difference between an inspired design and ripping it off 1:1 including trademarks (and yes, some keycap sets do have registered trademarks for the names, but that doesn't stop the companies overseas from violating it).

There really isn't any excuse either to make clones of regularly in stock sets like DSA Astrolokeys, but it still happens. Sometimes, these companies even counterfeit small time artists directly, like the resin sculpture keycaps Alpha Keycaps and others make, and while artwork like that is protectable IP, enforcement is not really possible given the jurisdiction of where the counterfeiters are based out of.

GMK lead times, as I stated many times, are not isolated to GMK - they are across the board on both Western and Chinese manus, like Signature Plastic, Keyreative, JTK, ePBT, etc. Some like Keyreative have been notorious for various QC issues such as warp, blurred and misaligned legends, and dyesub issues.

You are also ignoring that these lead times exploded due to the abnormally high demand during covid in combination with global supply chain issues, hence why this has affected keycap set manufacturers across the board. At the time orders were being placed, some of these queues may not have been expected to be as long as they ended up. Additionally, GMK has been expanding production with new machines and hiring. https://oblotzky.industries/pages/visiting-gmk

It's not like custom keyboards $400+ have really short GB times either, but the manus and designs are so varied that perhaps it's less noticeable, or people in those GBs are more aware of what a GB entails.

Me: owns Cherry MX Reds, Akko Lavender Purples, and is awaiting a set of FLCMMK Ice Mint switches.