Wow that bag looks amazing excited for the buy
In case it wasn’t obvious, that is an intentional texture. 
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That sample is drastically changing my mind on what finish I thought I wanted…
Would it be possible to get a picture, or qualitative description, comparing the black anodized aluminum with the black PVD stainless steel?
Excited for the drop 
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I’ve actually ultimately decided not to do black anodized on this round, I’m sorry to say.
I’ve learned from past projects that the excessive proliferation of finish options makes everything take longer and increases risk that one finish having problems will hold everything up. As such, I’ve exerted extreme self-discipline on this project to keep the finish variants limited to a small, highly-curated selection of interesting options. This will allow me to focus on getting those coming out as high-quality as possible rather than juggling and coordinating a mountain of SKUs. I’m pretty confident that among the options I’m offering, however, there will be something for everyone. I was originally just going to do four options, but I’ve come up with a new matte version of Retro Refrigerator that is just too beautiful for me to resist.
These are the finishes I’ve decided to go for (I’ve slightly tweaked the names from before):
Aerospace: an aluminum-colored bead-blasted anodized finish—gray enamel badge.
Retro Refrigerator: a matte blue-green powder-coat evocative of Midcentury Modern kitchen appliances and typewriters—white enamel badge.
Aperture: a powder-coated hammertone texture, evocative of the finish used on certain vintage Leica cameras and high-end Japanese tripods—gray enamel badge.
Motorsport: a textured vibrant yellow powder coat—red enamel badge.
Monolith: an astonishingly heavy all-steel housing with matte black PVD coating (a durable coating primarily used on luxury watches)—purple enamel badge.
Absolutely, and absolutely. The group buy will have closed by then, however. My current plan is to run it roughly from 22 September to 15 October, but I may actually cut it off early if the numbers get too high.
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oof… so many good options. I’m really torn between Aperture, Retro Refrigerator(to match the Norbaforce), or going crazy with the Monolith. How many of these do you plan on having prototypes of?
@norbauer Thanks for laying out all of the options. I will likely go crazy (@mrkantz) with the Monolith in order to match my Norbatouch. Do you have price estimates for the different versions or should we be patient and wait for the buy to go live?
ooo boi I can’t wait for this thing to go live. That carrying case is actually super clean. Right now I’m looking to get aperture or monolith(hopefully it doesnt cost a kidney)!
Alas, I’m afraid they’ll cost at least 3.67 kidneys. I’m not sure if anyone will actually order one as a result, which is totally cool. I’m honestly still agonizing about what to charge for it, because if even just one or two of them come back with cosmetic defects that cause me to reject the parts (I usually over-order by a little to account for this) merely having offered this option will end up having cost me a non-trivial sum of money given the laughably high per-part cost (Having to scrap an aluminum housing is painful, but not devastating.) Just for reference, the last one-off steel Heavy-6 I got made and PVD coated cost me over $2000. 
The reason for the cost difference is partly the material itself, but it’s mostly to do with the machine time and tooling costs. Stainless (and still in general) is very abrasive on the tungsten carbide tooling used to mill these parts, so you have to go really slowly and in very shallow passes, and the end mills wear out quickly. Since most of the cost of parts like these comes down to machine time of the CAM program, it makes an all-stainless keyboard housing truly insanely expensive to fabricate.
But I like to think of myself as being in the endgame game, so I wanted to offer it just in case anybody wanted to go crazy. 
Unrelated: here is what the new Retro looks like
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RIP Kidney.
On a more serious note. The revised retro refrigerator is a nice addition! I guess I’ll just wait til the weekend to see how all the colors are. Regardless, I’m in this one Norbauer! Thanks for the meticulous approach in building the Heavy-6!
monolith pics when? 
I’m working on editing photos now, but here’s what I have at the moment.
(with optional riser feet installed)
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I wish I a) had the money for the Monolith and b) owned a FC660C.
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Unfortunately I think I need to take back what I said about going crazy with the monolith. I get enough grief for how much I spend on this hobby, I think my SO would leave me if I spent more than 1.5 kidneys. That said, the monolith self-defense version looks delicious; I will envy anyone who ends up with one and pity the end mills tasked with cutting them.
Nonetheless still excited for the other options, I purchased a FC660C because of the Heavy-6 and intend to go through with making it complete. To harass @norbauer for more photo editing, are there any teases of Aperture and Aerospace available?
I second this… 
I am also very interested in these finishes.
I thought I was dead-set on motorsport yellow but the finishes of both the new Retro Refrigerator and Monolith have me reconsidering since their textures are all so varied and awesome.
Sure. Pictures of the Aerospace version are in my opening post, and here is what the Aperture finish looks like.
Happily.
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Wow, that Aperture is stunning