Stay tuned. This might come sooner than you’d imagine. 
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Where do I send the check?
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This looks super cool! It would be cool to see options for a steeper angle. 3 degrees is very shallow for how tall these tend to be.
Man, then you have to go and tease that… I’ve had an FC980C I don’t want for so long, and was thinking this might be my chance to offload it because topre is more of a pain than Alps for finding keycaps… Now, a nice case and maybe some keycaps are an option?! Why don’t I just give you my wallet, lol.
Srsly, good luck with these endeavors. 
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Dream Norbauer! 
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I can see it now FC-980c v2 with usb-c as Ryan puts the GB up. Third times the charm.
That would indeed be just my luck.
Please forgive me for this stupid question 
but there is the Leopold FC980C (Topre) and Leopold FC980M (MX), both the same layout and size? Theoretically, the Heavy-9 should fit both, right? 
I haven’t seen the inside of an FC980M but if it’s anything like the FC660M, it won’t be compatible with the Heavy-9 because the internal circuitry (and perhaps plate) has a different geometry.
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Cool, thank you for answer! 
Make sense.
Of course. Wish I had better news to offer!
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All good 
It’s time for a new adventure for me!
Very excited for this. I do have one question. The new KBDfans HHKB and the Noxary HHKB are doing their own plates with their kits. Will the Heavy-9 come with it’s own plate or will it be using the stock one?
I’m not familiar with the HHKB fans one (please share a link!), but I assume it’s the same as the Noxary prototype that I saw in LA, which is designed to use a metal plate, requiring harvesting slider housings from another Topre keyboard to be popped into the plate.
Mine will, strictly speaking, come with its own plate, but it will be injection-molded ABS plastic like the stock plate, so it should feel more like the original HHKB while also being my own custom plate that I can fit into a housing of my own design, and it avoids needing to sacrifice a second keyboard to do the build. So I guess the answer to your question is: sort of both. 
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Good news for the FC980C owners.
@Moarcoffeeplzzz Oh wait, I just realized this question was actually about the Heavy-9 and not the HHKB housing I’m working on. Why would anyone want a difference plate for a FC980C? The reason why the HHKBs need replacement plates is that on those the plate can’t be extricated from the housing. But on something like an FC980C, the stock plate just comes right out because it’s a separate piece of metal.
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I believe the design uses a plate meant for the NiZ slider/housings.
This looks like a custom HHKB PCB/plate/switch no? Or is this what the actual HHKB looks like inside?
HHKB doesn’t have a removable plate. The plate and upper half of housing are one piece of injection molded ABS.
They might be using the PCB only but are replacing everything else.
They could be working with NIZ for the PCB too. They recently ran a DiY kit. Kinda sad I didn’t go in on it, but I’m holding out for a Norbauer