Sorry, all. I didn’t see this post until just now because nobody actually tagged my username.
This is likely going to be the next new thing I release. I’ve been working on retro-futurist keyboard stands for people with collections of boards. These will be cast in engineered stone, kind of like the work that Brazen Studio has been doing lately.
I’ve 3D scanned a bunch of popular boards to ensure wide compatibility.
I’m also working on a TKL keycap set in the MCR profile, mildly inspired by the Xerox Alto. I’m calling it R&D 1973.
I’m not sure that I’ve exactly said this anywhere public yet, but: yes. And when you say “full custom,” you probably aren’t imagining quite how “full” that’ll be.
I’ve been working on this moonshot project for over three years, with components coming from companies that supply Apple, Leica, etc.—all designed from the group up consulting with acoustic, electrical, and mechanical engineering experts. Every single component is custom and Norbauer-designed, to a rather long list of design objectives that optimize a keyboard from the ground up around the things that we as a community have discovered make keyboards better, particularly in the domain of acoustics and materials/finishing. The internals are so hyper-optimized around my wacky design goals that even the screws have to be bespoke.
The final thing to be solved is the stabilizer problem. I’ve been experimenting and iterating on this puzzle for two years now, and I do have a mechanism that behaves rattle-free without lubrication. It’s better than anything else on the market, but I’m still not happy. I think we can do better. So I’m still working on it. Hopefully in the next few months I’ll have something I consider production-ready, but I’m not rushing it.
Stay tuned. But I wouldn’t expect anything for sale around the new switch platform until 2023.