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Showing 1 of 111 conversations about:
Steve88
5
Jan 4, 2018
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Hi, can some mechkey guru explain to me why are these abs plastic keycaps so expensive? Thanks. 🤔😏
TheEv0
178
Jan 4, 2018
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Steve88They're expensive because it's a niche market that requires "special ordering" in bulk for the manufacturers to make custom community keysets. GMK is the brand that acquired Cherry's original machinery that made double shot (2 layered plastic) key caps, some people (myself included) think that GMK makes the best keycaps.
tldr: Small market, expensive manufacturing for small amounts from the OG machinery. "Made in Germany" quality.
tldr: Small market, expensive manufacturing for small amounts from the OG machinery. "Made in Germany" quality.
eksuen
748
Jan 4, 2018
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Steve88Small batch custom orders always are. These are not off-the-shelf nor produced regularly, but made to order. GMK isn't in the business of losing money, so we pay a premium to secure a slot in manufacturing that could otherwise be used to produce product for industrial/commercial clients/applications, which have massive quantities. Our orders, while growing larger as the community grows larger, are still small orders. The time it takes to swap out tooling and change over a line is more or less fixed, and any time spent doing that means time not spent manufacturing product. There are fixed costs associated with any sized order, which is also why there is an MOQ and why the price per unit drops with a larger order. If we were to order in the millions, I'm sure it'd be much cheaper.
Fingerbreaker
37
Jan 4, 2018
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Steve88Raw material and machinery as well as upkeep costs more in Germany, the taxes alone are slaughtering us, take also into account how rebranded chinese products is making everything seem like they are supposed to be cheaper, truth hurts. If you think these are expensive wait till you hear European customers ranting on about import taxes haha
dvorcol
5376
Keyboard Club Member
Jan 5, 2018
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Steve88Also, GMK's ABS keycap walls are much thicker - thus more solid-feeling - than most of the standard ABS keycaps found on mass-market keyboards.
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