I’ve been waiting for this for a long time - I was hoping to see it in the Palm Desert finish you had for the Norbaforce MkII but I’ll have to get one of these 
I’ll be very interested if the price is under $300
It won’t.
Probably looking around $500 for one of these beasts. The Heavy-6 was more than $300 so unless @norbauer feels like playing Santa Claus for the community don’t expect it to be under $300.
I feel like he would have phrased it like that if it were to be under $300 - here he says just under $500
1 Like
Yeah, unfortunately just the raw direct costs of producing this in the US will be around $300 for a design like this, and that’s before accounting for any overhead.
So far the keyboard side of my business has always operated at a loss, so I feel like the Santa Claus approach is pretty much the one I already take. 
8 Likes
I need a monolith heavy 9.
2 Likes
Wow, it’s happening!
PVD rose gold finish? I don’t know if I want to know how much that would cost.
Whoa, really? What is your main source of income then? That’s pretty crazy but also very C4$H M0N3Y of you to keep designing for this community.
He does it cause he wants to own this stuff as bad as we do and doesn’t want to pay a small fortune for it 
And because he’s awesome 
1 Like
Haha. Well, I do hope that at some point the keyboard stuff will become sustainable/profitable because it’s makes it possible to do more ambitious projects. But for now I’m trying just to focus on doing good work, new R&D initiatives, and building out infrastructure. For example, I’ve spent about $50,000 so far in developing my HHKB housing. Unlikely I’ll ever make that back. But I’ve learned so much in the process.
I wrote a fairly long post about this a while back on GeekHack. My overhead/operating costs have only gone up since then, especially since I finally bit the bullet and committed to domestic manufacturing.
7 Likes
The community benefits from Norbauer’s investment of sizable sums of money on R&D and product development, that he may not make back (not to mention his time) . That’s pretty cool.
I do hope that at some point it gets to at least break-even so it is sustainable though.
Wow, that’s crazy, how does it add up to be that much? Do you have any machining equipment you could just make these yourself with?
The injection mold alone costs $30k to do it properly. Every iterative housing prototype costs $1250-2000, and I’ve been through many. The high-resolution X-ray 3D scan of the original plate was a few thousand dollars. Samples and testing of the urethane casting possibility was thousands more. Even every HHKB itself that I’ve used for testing costs around $400, etc. It all adds up quickly.
Owning a CNC machine to make the housing would only address a minor part of the expenses described above. Further,one that could achieve proper surface finishes and machine parts large enough would run around $125,000 and requires a commercial space with three-phase power. (I’ve looked into it quite seriously.) Alas, especially here in California, that’s really not feasible for me, so I just send one-off housings out to prototyping shops. The unit price is high, but nothing by comparison to owning and running my own machine.
7 Likes
PM us if you need grocery money.
3 Likes
Wow, thanks for the insight! Sorry if I’m prying too much, I’m just fascinated with the process and have no idea what all goes into it.
Do you want us to start a GoFundMe to get you that fancy CNC machine and a warehouse to work in? 
Seriously though, thank you again for your contribution, it’s a joy to type on my Heavy-6 every day.
2 Likes
Haha. Well, I wasn’t complaining or anything–just answering your question about where the expenses come from. 
2020 IC for the Norbafactory. Let’s go.
5 Likes
I’ll pitch in $100k for the Norbafactory if you can get some custom Topre caps going with these housings.
3 Likes