It has been a quiet couple of months but the work on MT3 profile and /dev/tty keycaps is proceeding at a steady pace.

The first step was to 3D print a full set of keys to check the ergonomics of our new design. We made very few updates to make sure that everything was spot on and then we proceeded to production. What you see pictured here is the very first batch of PBT injected prototypes. They are not final by any means, the color is not finalized yet and we still have to work on the surface texture, but we are getting closer to the real deal and I wanted to share with you the progress.

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I just received the first full set of MT3 prototypes and I couldn’t hold myself, I had to show you the beauty of these things :) Bottom line is: they are better than I anticipated, and I’m usually very critical about my work.

Sorry for bad quality audio/video I just rushed it out.

By now you should know that I’m a retro-junkie. Signature Plastics SA keycaps are the closest we can ask to a vintage looking set but I’ve always seen it as an “hack”, not to mention that it is mostly an ABS set.

Few years ago Topre released the Hi-Pro keyboard which featured a wonderful set of high profile keycaps in a retrolucious beige colorway. I knew it had to be mine!

The keyboard was indeed sexy but the keycaps seemed still wrong, too high, too sharp and anyway still limited to topre switches. That got my maker-sense tickling and it is basically how the MT3 profile idea was born.

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Did you think Granite had nothing more to say? Well, think again :) With the collaboration of Signature Plastics I’m happy to announce the immediate availability of Granite High Contrast.

All kits from the previous batch of Granite are available in the new dark gray + white color scheme, including the international kit and monologends. Even better you can mix and match the new keycaps with any previous gray Granite you have: they go wonderfully together!

I hope you like them and Happy Holidays!

Go grab HC Granite!

Something I thought impossible just few years ago just became reality: Retro finally goes GMK and it’s ready to be purchased on Massdrop.

All started with DSA Retro. It was the first community organized group buy in DSA family. To tell all the truth Koreans had some DSA before us but it was limited to their market. DSA Retro was one of the most successful group buy of the time (we are talking 3-4 years ago). It was so popular in part because DSA was a novelty at the time, in part because we included a hell lot of options. It wasn’t so easy back then to cover less common or custom keyboards and Retro was basically compatible with all of them :)

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I feel that I failed to explain why I care so much about the work I’ve done for Granite. Many new members of the community haven’t witnessed the creation of the set and the argument about intellectual property of a keycap set comes out every now and then.

Please do understand that the following is my personal opinion, likely a copyright lawyer would see things very differently.

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It’s hardly a novelty now but I actually started working on a Topre to Cherry MX adapter back in 2014. The NovaTouch was not a thing yet and no 3D model for the slider/converter was available at the time.

It’s an incredibly simple model and I’m by no means a 3D expert, but anyway I hope you can make good use of it. Please note that everything is released under a Creative Common license, you are free to use and modify the models as long as you give credit and re-share under the same license.

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When I first released the Granite set a few years ago I never would have thought I would have seen a Round 4.

I actually wanted to make the first round a limited edition –like all of my designs– but I’ve been accused of being selfish and if the community wanted more I should have let ’em.

So we had Round 2 and it sold twice what the first round did. Again, I thought the world had enough, but boy I was wrong! I was basically receiving a message on Reddit, Geekhack or Deskthority every other day about running the set again.

I reluctantly agreed on Round 3, sure that nobody would have cared about Granite anymore. Round 3 sold even more than the previous run. I’m pretty sure I said Round 3 would have been the last one, not because I didn’t want more, but because I thought the interest on gray keycaps was gone for good. Apparently I was wrong again.

So I’m glad to announce the forth round of Granite. I won’t say that this will be the last one, but I’d like to concentrate on something new for the next time.

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