I love the choice of name @norbauer
This project and its resulting products sound very intriguing. Thank you for sharing a heads-up with the community, and all the best for future development.
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Cannot wait to see it all, Ryan. 
I’m also making something from the ground up (but not down to the switch), and have been stuck in the vendor optimization phase for months. Don’t know how you have handled that for years. Sorry it cost you time and money, but looking forward to being part of how you push the hobby forward next.
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Yes, give the ISO/NorDe and Ortho some love while you at it. 
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As a fellow appreciator of the stoics, I absolutely love the naming convention. My mind is whirring with ideas. The possibilities are endless!
- TKL: Seneca
- 1800: Epictetus
- 60%: Zeno
- HHKB: Aurelius
← this one is not a debate, @norbauer! 
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Just catching up on this thread -
I’m stoked about everything you mentioned, but this is more or less the exact paragraph I’ve been hoping to read in this space for years, and I’m delighted its author is someone with such a meticulous track record of development.
“Hype” isn’t the right word, but it’s the first one that comes to mind. Is there a patient version of that? I think what I’m trying to say here is I’m truly excited to see what this will look like once it’s received your seal of approval, whenever that may be.
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me waiting for a 60% that doesn’t require cannibalizing another board
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Damn. Just catching up on these threads but I can’t help diving deeper into the Topre hole. Any updates on the Seneca @norbauer ?
The guys who were working on this (whom I was helping out) kind of just disappeared. Covid got in the way of their prototyping and manufacturing plans in India and I think they just got discouraged, which is understandable.
Damn. Just catching up on these threads but I can’t help diving deeper into the Topre hole. Any updates on the Seneca @norbauer ?
It’s coming along! The stabilizer prototype is working great, and we’re just trying to figure out how to move to production tooling since. MOQs there are the challenge, since we only need five sets of stabilizer parts for every 87 switches, so we can’t use the same manufacturer that is making the switch parts for us. Fortunately the stabilizers have been designed to perform well with very loose tolerances, so we don’t have to work with such a precision factory as we’re using on the switches.
The stabilizer work also revealed several opportunities to improve our switch architecture, which will give us a lot of mechanical improvements over Topre/Niz, but comes at the cost of an additional two months of R&D time. My latest switch is a kind of off-the-wall design but the upshot is greatly decreased wobble (and, importantly, minimal wobble that is uniform across all axes), along with almost total elimination of the possibility of “key twist” (where some Topre keys can be rotated out of alignment when viewed from above). I’m writing up a very long article about the journey to get here and all the technical choices I made and why. Will post it once everything is worked out.
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Oh bummer… another one bites the dust.
A shame, but understandable, as you said.
Here’s to hoping there will be justice for topre yet.
I was hoping this was a haiku, but nope.
bummer … another
one bites the dust. a shame but
understandable
as you said here’s to
hoping there will be justice
for topre again
(if you were hoping
that this might be a haiku
you may find it is)
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I am hoping to see that sometime in the future.
How are people feeling about the midcentury riser?
I want to get it, but I’m afraid I do and then Ryan releases some kind of brass or marble version and then I regret picking up the walnut.
It’s a dilemma.
If people buy the riser, there will be more risers.
If they don’t buy the riser, this will be the only riser ever made.
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I bought one. I own 2 norbaforces though, so I figured if a he comes out with new material I’ll pick it up too 
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What’s the incentive to buy one? Just looks like a spab of wood.
At the same time it seems to raise the front height even more.
For people who want a slight angle on the board and don’t like the look of the old risers. Front height doesn’t matter much to me. When they’re too tall I sometimes use a wrist rest. I do like my keyboards fairly flat, but when I use 55g Topre domes, I sometimes feel like I want a slight angle.
I understand the appeal of a riser. I just don’t understand the appeal for Norbauer’s one.
It just seems like I’m getting ripped off for that price.
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