[GB] the Heavy Grail, a Norbauer housing for the HHKB

lol. That is exactly what this has been like trying to figure all this out! You should see the spreadsheets we’ve had to make to try to get everything to balance out. :man_facepalming:t2: The HG has a lot of little essential parts, right down to the gaskets, EVA foams for the packaging, and the bumpons.

The only reason I’m willing to do another batch of housings is that for anodized parts we’ve gotten it such that our reject rate is close to zero, at least if our last (currently shipping) batch is indicative. If we were ordering powder-coated parts, it would just be an endless cycle as shown above, as those always lead to some B-stocks and below, sometimes as much as about 25% of a batch.

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Those Aerospace ones are even better in person than in photos. So honestly I’m happy more folks are able to get their hands on one!

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any of them Pro 2? I have a couple of Pro 2s ready for housing, 1 for Evija and 1 for HG :joy:

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Yes! We have about six Pro 2s left, all in Sunset Blvd. Four are D-stock (i.e., best to have them re-coated but they will be inexpensive) and two are of unknown grade TBD and may actually be A-stock. We’ll list once we know the final situation on the switch plate quantities.

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Did y’all get those bumpons you were waiting for? It’s been a few weeks, figured I’d check in to see how much longer us lucky eight should have to wait.

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We did. I imagine Jared is shipping those right now but I’ll ping him about it.

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We checked and all these were shipped out already that weren’t combined with other pending items. Your order appears to have some other items in it that are still being prepared (numpad, I think), so it’ll ship once everything is ready. There are a couple of others in the same situation. In any case, should be soon. (We had to pause shipping for two days in order to take end-of-year inventory, per IRS requirements, so that has also slowed us down.)

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I see. Currently I have six outstanding Norbauer orders in the queue. Will I have to wait until the last of them is ready before what I ordered in 2021 ships, or might I see some of the items sooner?

I wasn’t expecting any form of shipping consolidation with the exception of the spare plate I’d purchased separately, which was supposed to ship with whatever board of mine went next.

No, this only applies to single orders. We don’t consolidate orders if it would delay shipment. I just looked more closely at your account, however, and it seems that the open items were ordered separately, so it looks like Jared was mistaken. I’ll follow up with him to see what the issue is. Unless you expressly asked us to bundle your orders, your GOCF should have shipped already. My apologies for the delay.

It would probably be best to take this conversation offline to avoid annoying other people watching the thread. We’ll follow up early this week by email when we know what’s up—hopefully just by sending you a tracking number of an item on its way.

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Thank you for looking into it it! I’ve been chomping at the bit to build the PC Heavy Grail, but in the meantime I’ve not been hurting for decent typing experiences. @dom prompted me to get this one out earlier this evening, and I’ve been enjoying it since.

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Thank you, Jason! Both look fantastic! :slight_smile: appreciate it!

Cool wrist rest

After a little problem with the clear plate, and waiting for a replacement, my GoCF build is finally complete!

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Love how it matches your deskmat, in both color palette and frosty theme!

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After sitting on the fence and eyeing the k2 c stock for quite a while I noticed that there was new stock in the norbazaar site! Picked up a b stock K2, and I’m so chuffed! I had some doubts if c stock would be too scruffy in white, but after reading a bit about the classification standards I’m pretty confident that the finish on the b stock will be more than adequate.

Thank you Ryan for doing these cases! I have a mark 1 Norbaforce from the first run, the finish is amazing still.

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Has anyone tried using the Deskey sliders/stab sliders for the Heavy Grail? I was seriously considering doing so on my GOCF, but wasn’t sure if there were any issues around it (even for sound, etc).

I have them on my HG, and I have not had any major issues. The enter key stabilizer is slightly askew, which you can ameliorate by twisting the key in the opposite direction. And, the spacebar fitment is very tight on the stems (but no interference that I can tell).

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You’d have to drill 4 holes (2 per 2u stabilizer) which is pretty daunting for a $100+ plate. Des sells a 2u drill template I think, with a hand drill. I did it by eye and it was not super fun, lol. Of the two Heavy Grails I built, for one, I had to file the majority of the slider housing to get des sliders to freely slide. The other still needed some filing, but significantly less ~ so your experience would likely vary.

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ah, darn! I was hoping their stabilizer sliders would mean that there would be no drilling involved. great to know.

I don’t think it’s the Deskey sliders/stabs that require you to drill the plate but rather the MX keycaps; they have three stems on them. The holes you drill are for the two side ones to move down ‘into’ the plate. I don’t think it’s a good idea, but if you were prepared to break off the two side stems on the keycap you wouldn’t need the holes.

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