A Popular, Familiar Profile
Spherical profile keycaps are very polarizing: you either love how they give your fingertips a little hug, or you hate the corners that assault your fingertips if you press the edge or corner of a keycap. By adding the DCX profile to our family, we now have a more comprehensive offering for keyboard fans. The subtle cylindrical sculpting provides for a relaxed typing experience that is similar to what is found on office keyboards around the globe.
Meticulous Details and Design
The DCX legends have ruler-straight lines, fully filled interior islands, and nicely squared corners. In addition to ensuring high-quality production processes, we were particularly deliberate with the typeface and layout decisions of every single keycap. Every legend has been meticulously reviewed and purposefully placed so that characters are aligned with one another, scaled appropriately, non-slanted, and properly spaced. The following is a production photo straight from the factory:
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Most critically, we’ve used advanced double-shot injection molding machines and tools to provide the sharpest, crispest legends around. We’re working within tolerances of 0.05 millimeters, and we continually tweak and refine our processes to ensure the highest levels of accuracy. The following is an example of the design process we use to achieve high quality legends - inaccuracies are highlighted and adjusted in subsequent tooling iterations.
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High-Strength Material
Not all ABS plastics are created equal. Different raw material ratios in ABS blends will change specific material properties. DCX keycaps are made of the same high-quality ABS plastic that make up MT3 double-shot keycaps. That means you can expect the same color vibrancy and shine resilience that so many have come to love. The manufacturing process that we're using is expected to be compatible with PBT as well—so once we've gotten our ABS production humming along, we'll be experimenting with PBT to see what we can come up with.
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Expansive Kit Compatibility
Like many of our offerings, our goal is to have a single Base Kit that can accommodate a variety of popular keyboard layouts. The Base Kit that will be offered for initial DCX keycap sets will include the following:
We’ve also designed the DCX toolsets with extensibility in mind, with plans to add sublegends, novelties, alice, ortho, 40s, icon mods and anything else the community comes up with too.
In-Stock Availability
DCX Keycap sets will be produced with the same ethos as all of our keycap offerings: to expand community accessibility via in-stock availability. It takes us 4 – 6 months to go from an idea, to color matching, to resin acquisition, mass production, quality control, and finally shipping. When in production, we can make sets quickly and efficiently at scale so that we can deliver preorders and have sufficient inventory for drop.com and other distribution channels.
As part of our launch program, we'll be revealing an interest check/poll for the community to vote on different colorways. The most popular selections will go into production and ship in Q3 2022.
DCX tools will be available to any designer who wants to release a set of keycaps that meets MOQ requirements.
What's next?
Next week, we'll review some close-up studio photos of the keycaps, start the poll for a future colorway, and talk about sprue marks and Mac compatibility.
(edit: profile name change)
I would absolutely love a red on red or any combination of red and black or red and gold in this profile. Looking forward to see what future sets come. $79 for preorder and $99 in stock is very fair pricing if these are up to par with the competition.
If they offer an international set as in the /dev/tty custom family, I'm in. I'm in even if they don't. I'd like to check it in real life, not just renders or users photos. But having an international set is everything to me. I use Latin American Spanish and /dev/tty it's the only one with a subset that has LAA compatibility.
bcus_y_notIt is! And that's why I'm making my very own ISO, double-shot, shine-thru, MT3, Cherry, DSA, OEM and SA, LAA-compatible sets! LOL, I wish... If I had the skills (and money), I'd gladly make sets for all my fellow Latin American keyb enthusiasts but then again, not enough demand. Most of them settle with the standard (US ANSI) format. It's the journey as much as the destination.
I am going to be buying these assuming all things go well.
I picked up some less "primo" keycaps off another web site before diving into the "club" here. I had a variety of problems always picking a set on this site. I am a "hour+" window shopper when I am seriously looking at the details or the "disgusting nuance!" of an item before "applying hammer" and going for it.
Meaning I would spend 6 months deciding on the red Samurais versus the blue ones. (I will get the red Samurai one day). Meaning to say that to build up an arsenal/repetoire/collection takes a bit of forethought.
The reason I mention all this is for a variety of reasons. I'm sitting on the Idabao id80 Crystal that I acquired through "you guys". It's spectacular barring the user doesn't hammer away at the PCB on install. (You know....) I bought 2 sets of very nice keycaps. They sit high. I like them. The "black on whites" keycaps that the Drop kit included sit lower. This is perfect. Why? "WASD" and "1234" and "JKL;" and also ideas like having the "Caps Lock" key sit lower than ("significantly or perhaps significantly"...) than the Left Shift and the Tab key. Think about it.
Your fingers know. I have piano hands, not guitar hands. I veer (on my brain and mentality) towards light actuation. In typing (versus gaming) I don't think the same applies. I'm consciously aware of my own presumed ignorance (arrogance).
The Holy Pandas are exceptional and I'm holding off Panda X versus "some other switch on Drop" (etc.) for now. I'm spoiled, right? I have no idea how to get certain ideas across into some people's brains.
The reason why I write this is to show a dialect for "liberal/conservative". If I like the "red" on the Iron Man (Marvel) set more than red Samurai, my brain will go for a "window shopping" trip. Meaning I will still (maybe) not like the Iron Man set if the symbols are on parts of the keyset that aren't in the "Novelties" grouping. It just gets too complex. If I'm buying a "green" themed keyset, it HAS to be perfect to my tastes.
In any case, just writing this now to say that the 3 primary colours on this new set is within the realm of "Exactly what I'm looking for." for future endeavours considering this particular 60% or 65% (etc.) keyboard. (The id80 Crystal.) I would then "turn that backwards" (after purchase) for a red Samurai or something like that. I think the white Hennesey's are superb albeit I'm not looking to pick them up.
It should be noted among the id80 Crystal crowd that you would have to open up the keyboard (no cross threading, please!) and get your "hands on" all the setscrews to change out the brassplate to the plastic one if one is building for a theme. The most valuable part of the thing being the PCB. Right? Meaning the brass plate is "bright". A little too glam for some depending on their setup. I love it, of course. I like writing. Here's a bunch of "junk" for folk to read.
Can you share some plans around 40 staggered and 40 ortho compatibility. And would we expect to see the same high costs associated with kitting via base kit + 40s or base kit + 40s + spacebars?
Hi I'm new to Drop and i just received my Keyboard i have been waiting for months for by Drop x MTN Dew x Borderlands movie and didn't know if there was a software like Logitech's for the keyboards. if anyone could help please let me know
High-Strength Material Not all ABS plastics are created equal. Different raw material ratios in ABS blends will change specific material properties. DCX keycaps are made of the same high-quality ABS plastic that make up MT3 double-shot keycaps. That means you can expect the same color vibrancy and shine resilience that so many have come to love. The manufacturing process that we're using is expected to be compatible with PBT as well—so once we've gotten our ABS production humming along, we'll be experimenting with PBT to see what we can come up with.
Expansive Kit Compatibility Like many of our offerings, our goal is to have a single Base Kit that can accommodate a variety of popular keyboard layouts. The Base Kit that will be offered for initial DCX keycap sets will include the following: We’ve also designed the DCX toolsets with extensibility in mind, with plans to add sublegends, novelties, alice, ortho, 40s, icon mods and anything else the community comes up with too. In-Stock Availability DCX Keycap sets will be produced with the same ethos as all of our keycap offerings: to expand community accessibility via in-stock availability. It takes us 4 – 6 months to go from an idea, to color matching, to resin acquisition, mass production, quality control, and finally shipping. When in production, we can make sets quickly and efficiently at scale so that we can deliver preorders and have sufficient inventory for drop.com and other distribution channels. As part of our launch program, we'll be revealing an interest check/poll for the community to vote on different colorways. The most popular selections will go into production and ship in Q3 2022. DCX tools will be available to any designer who wants to release a set of keycaps that meets MOQ requirements. What's next? Next week, we'll review some close-up studio photos of the keycaps, start the poll for a future colorway, and talk about sprue marks and Mac compatibility. (edit: profile name change)