Hey gang,
just a quick dispatch from the deep dark cave of monitors, magnifying glasses, screwdrivers and printers simultaneously giving birth to hundreds of shipping labels.

It will be another long one, so it might be wiser to scroll down to the TL/DR

This update will include news about the shipping progress, news for MKEU buyers and the upcoming R.1 Aftermath Sale

After weeks of QC and with batches of Werk One going out weekly I am happy to report that we have shipped out over 200 units. Considering there have been nearly no concerns regarding the quality of the boards you guys receive, I believe we are on track and the lengthy QC process is well worth the time.

It's truly exciting to see all your builds basically everywhere - on our discord, reddit and IG, thanks again for sharing our work. It's a niche hobby and highly experimental items like Werk One will never run in high quantities, investing years of hard work in projects like this sometimes feel questionable, but guys, to say the least, it's incredibly rewarding to see so many people happy with their Werk Ones, so many sharing their builds and being so excited about their boards! Your enthusiasm feeds ours and makes all of this madness possible.

Due to the high volume of exports we are undergoing a routine check by German export customs in the next 10 days.The shipping is currently on hold and will continue in the second half of October.
This will most likely include long awaited warm Moloko top units and the first Batch of BHS units Wally. The Moloko units are finished and are shipped to us by air and we expect them within the next weeks. In the meantime you can request an address change if needed by contacting us via the page contact form.

As promised we have a sneak peek of one of the newly produced warm Moloko top next to a light creme Moloko

And allow me to share a work in progress pic shared by Wally Patina. We can't wait to see all the BHS units in person!

The Moloko Tops (light and the few remaining warm) will go live on our page in November as an extra item you can order. They will come at a discounted price for the initial Moloko variant buyers while the stock lasts. If you are planning to buy one, kindly shoot us a message through the page contact form.

News for the MKEU buyers

The batch that we are reproducing for MKEU buyers will be ready to ship to us end of October / November. Depending on the shipping speed and the workload, we expect to ship the units to people affected by MKEU bankruptcy by the end of 2024

Regarding the long awaited “extras” I Werk One R.1 Aftermath Sale:

The demand for extra Werk One boards is rather high and it would be impossible to cover it with the small amount of b-stock extras that we have. At the same time I personally don't feel comfortable to ship out units with b-stock issues. To cover the demand, we decided to refinish affected units and produce some of the units initially overordered by MKEU from scratch. This will be a first test run of the pre-order model we aim to continue with Triad in 2025. The fulfillment target for this Werk One R.1 aftermath sale is Q4 2024 alongside with the units for initial MKEU buyers. The units are already produced and are currently undergoing a factory QC.

Just as during the initial Werk One sale, people on the waitlist will start receiving invitations via e-mail with instructions, starting on 6th of October - this Sunday. We will have a couple of nvitation waves before the sale will go live with the usual FCFS model later this month.
You still can enter the waitlist by sending a message via our page contact form.

TL/DR:
- Over 200 Werk One units are shipped
- Shipping will continue second half of October
- Warm Moloko tops are finalised and are on their way to us
- First BHS batch will ship in October
- Units for people affected by MKEU are produced and are undergoing a factory QC
- Werk One R.1 Aftermath Sale is starting on 06.10. with the first wave of invites for
people on the waitlis

We will have some pretty exciting news on Triad in the next update, the prototypes are almost finalised and we are expecting them soon!

Have a great week,

Zaum out!

Hey gang, to keep you updated with a quick QC report and something important that willconcern mainly the Moloko owners.
The very vast majority of units we have quality controlled so far are A-stock with no reason for concern. We are very satisfied with the quality of the finish and the overall CNC work. There are still some important things to speak about:

- During the shipping there was some damage to copper plates that were too heavy andthe manufacturer did not pack properly and got bent during the transit.

- We are still missing some of the extra badges and copper badges, currently we are
waiting for the manufacturer to forward them to us.

Both plates and the badge sets will be shipped to respective buyers at a later point. Don't worry if the unit you receive is missing the extra badges or plates - we are on it.

 - We are in a somewhat ambiguous situation with Moloko units. While the finish is great, the e-coat creme Moloko tone doesn't match the color of the prototype we matched in 2022 as well as we hoped. It's still a milky cream color but it came out slightly more neutral and less warm. The manufacturer thought it was fine and promised that it's exactly the same colour as the prototype. This is unfortunately not the case and became apparent to us since the tops are not matching the Keebstuff Moloko cables well. We failed to catch it during the production, since the slight colour variance became only apparent when we saw the units in person. While variance in e-coat and anodisation color accuracy is common, and I personally find the more neutral creme a really nice color, it's not up to the quality standards we set for werk.technica to ship out units with a coating that might not be in line with what you expect.We don't want a rama soya situation or another nautilus for werk.technica buyers. We stand by our obligation to stay transparent with you, our buyers who make this beautiful madness possible.

Here are a few pics of the current top:

This is why we are currently reproducing around 100 Moloko tops. Those will be ready to ship to us in September. The Moloko unit fulfillment is on hold, but since we are very well aware that many of you don't want to wait any longer we have two options for Moloko owners:

1.  If you no longer want to wait and are fine with a slightly more neutral milky creme tone, kindly shoot us a quick Email to moloko.support@werktechnica.com and your order will be put back on the fulfillment. You will be eligible to purchase a second warmer Moloko top later down the line significantly far below the manufacturing cost (less than 100 usd).

2.  If you are ok with waiting for a warmer Moloko top:  You still will be eligible to purchase a second more neutral Moloko top later down the line at a high discount if you want to mix your Moloko game up with a more neutral milky top.

To give you an ETA, we expect the warmer creme tops to ship to us in September and arrive in October/ November

The remaining tops will be up for sale at a later point which might be interesting for the owners of other editions. The tolerance of e-coated tops is less conservative than anodized aluminum and polycarbonate tops, so they should be interchangeable.  

We are sorry for the inconvenience this causes and hope the solution we could provide is at least somewhat to your satisfaction. We feel we owe it to our customers to follow the quality standards we set for ourselves.

Next week we plan to send out the first truly large batch of Werk One boards, keep an eye for shipping notifications!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Zaum out

Hey gang!

Sorry for intrusion, but it is The Day!

I'm not on my ipad right now but if I was, I would put some little celebratory explosions here. instead i will just type some explosive ampersands !&& && &&!

Werk One units finally arrived. It's the largest pile of keyboards I've seen so far and it's very exciting. And heavy. We are running in circles, sorting the boxes, checking back on details with the manufacturer, admiring all that shiny curved 5-axis cnc metal and starting with the QC. 

From brief QC checking: things look great, we hope it stays this way when it comes to individual unit QC. Currently we are missing some QC cards, Keebstuff Cables and daughter board screws that are already on the way to us and are arriving in the coming week.

So barring any further weird surprises, we expect to ship out the first units before the end of this month!

IF YOU STILL NEED TO CHANGE YOUR ADDRESS or never received an address confirmation from us after requesting a change (sorry if that's happened!), kindly send us a PM with your order number through the page contact form.

For BHS owners: Wally is on a holiday right now and the plan is that he is receiving the BHS units this month for coating.

For Commission owners: should your unit require additional artisan treatment, your units are heading out to the artisans next week too.

For those of you with sad deadbeat friends who missed on the initial Werk One run: our extras waiting list is rather long at this point, but with the units that MKEU has over ordered and never paid we will have a bit more units available later this year, feel free to shoot us a msg through the page contact form if you are eying a particular edition.

As for people unfortunate enough to purchase from MKEU, we finally have a solution for you, similar to Oblotzky MKEU solution earlier this year, just with a larger discount. More on that in the coming days in a separate update. The units in question are currently being finalized in our factory and we have been working hard to make this happen.

Thanks for all your patience, this first run wasn't without hiccups and we are sorry for your wait. Some things we can't control, some things we have to improve upon. The team is collecting experience and I think it's the right way to go without any vendor support as an independent design studio, especially considering the developments of the current keyboard market in the vendor space.

It's very exciting times for us and we can't wait to see the first Werk One units in the wild!

Thanks for all your support!

Zaum

Hope you have a great Sunday! It's getting really warm and sunny outside, there are bats flying around the low branches tonight like gargantuan butterflies and Mars is really big in the sky this time of year O_O

First of all sorry for the slightly delayed official production announcement and overall waiting time with Werk One. With the CNY and a few other holidays, there was almost 1.5 months of big nothing happening at our production partner, so we had to wait.

The great big news is: Werk One boards and the packaging production are finished, all the boards are finally packed up and our forwarder is working on getting them asap to our warehouse in Germany. Due to the many current geopolitical issues with the Red Sea shipping route, we decided to go with railway freight, which is more costly but also faster. We expect the boards to arrive in Europe within 3-5 weeks. After the boards have arrived in our warehouse, we immediately start with the final QC and are shipping out the boards to you.

Hey gang, hope you have some great holidays! Let's get to our end of the year update and hopefully our last big Werk One production update.

Werk One Production

We hoped we could start fulfilling Werk One R.1 units before Christmas, unfortunately we ran into severe issues with the packaging. While packaging went into production early Q2, our first factory couldn’t deliver satisfying results, especially in regard of foam protection which was a red flag for us. We ended up with a new packaging manufacturing partner and had to prototype from the start. The results are pretty great this time. Right now we are waiting for the final sample with a few packed up boards and all the accessories to arrive at our office in Tübingen. While I don’t want to spoil the unboxing, here a close up of the colours and texture we are rather happy with =)

We expect the packaging production to complete by mid-January. After that the boards will be packed up and shipped to us. I want to stay conservative with the fulfillment eta, since it's difficult for us to predict how fast German customs will be, but we think the boards should be in February in our warehouse which we are currently setting up. The production of the R.1 Werk One units is completely finished, we solved the remaining issues with polycarbonate and the commission unit engravings are finalized. Couple of pics:

While we were waiting for the packaging prototypes, we used the time to add a little something to your Werk One kits that originally wasn’t planned.

Many buyers reached out asking about options to modify the sound with different foams for PCB and the plate. While Werk One was designed without foam, with a very specific bright and clacky sound profile back in mind, we thought that having more options to customize the build is always better than less. We collaborated with greendoorgeeks and after 2 prototyping rounds, we came up with suitable materials for pcb and plate foams, so you can further customize the soundprofile of your One. Each kit of Werk One will come with one set of PCB and plate foam. Should you need more sets they will be made available later down the road at greendoorgeeks.com and our accessories page. Here few pics of the prototypes:

Tomorrow never knows

We expect 2024 to be quite big for werk.technica and we've planned some big things for the coming year. We didn't want to release new products while R.1 Werk One units were still in production, since it was our first big pre-order. Still it was a very busy year behind the curtains.

First Triad and Instrument runs are planned for 2024. Instrument is being redesigned from ground up to achieve a sleeker profile and a practical quirk many of you will be excited to see. More about it in 2024.

First Triad prototyping round is completed the boards are on their way to us. The design is greenlit from our production team, so we can get into detail and finish work with the final prototyping round. Here some first very raw pics from our manufacturing partner: 

Some long term followers are hoping for the Luna variant to return. It might indeed return with Triad: matte silver top, mirror polished steel front bottom body, mirror polished steel weights and polycarbonate rear. Here you can see first samples of a polycarbonate curved rear with mirror polished steel weight used with Moloko aluminum pieces.

The biggest difficulty with Werk Triad design was to achieve the tight tolerances of 4 interconnecting parts with different coatings and materials shaping the bottom body artwork - without interruptions. Which worked out just great and which we are rather proud of. We should have proper studio pics of different Triad variants in the coming months.

Werk Triad R.1 is planned for Q2-Q3 2024 depending on the results of the second, final prototyping round. Oled modules and dials will be a big focus of the second Triad prototyping round, the modules will be interchangeable with Werk One.

Alongside with Triad we will run Werk Emissary. We are still trying different manufacturers, while current results are very promising, we want to try MTNU profile Emissary variant, which should suit werk.technica designs rather well. Only downside with MTNU, we would be limited to MTNU GMK legends. We are curious to hear your thoughts about it and what you would prefer for the first Werk Emissary run.

Last but not least, the work on leather carry cases for werk.technica designs continues. We are collaborating with small businesses in Spain and Italy that specialize in luxury leather and vegan leather bags and accessories. First material samples are looking very promising, we will have first prototypes Q1-Q2 2024.

Alongside with that we are working on werk.accessories Amaya deskmats. Werk Amaya mats are named after the small Spanish village where they will be produced. Thick toned premium leather, vegan leather and merino wool are the planned options. The leather variant with rounded edges is seen on the pics above :) 

The last announcement for 2024 is werk.technica & friends program: we are expanding our keyboard offering in 2024 in collaboration with selected designers, a small sneak peek:

tl;dr

- Werk One production is completed, final polycarbonate units passed the factory QC

- We encountered a big issue with packaging foam and had to change the packaging factory, new packaging is being produced right now, its looking great but we had to move the fulfillment eta to Q1 2024, we expect the units to arrive in our warehouse sometime in November

- There will be a small stock of extras, each variant but BHS will be available

- There will be Werk One R.2, likely 2024

- R.1 of Triad prototyping is completed, we expect to run Triad Q2 2024

- Instrument is being redesigned for sleeker profile and more functions, it will run 2024

- Werk Emissary samples look good but we will try few more manufacturers, including GMK for MTNU profile

- Werk Accessories: Amaya leather cases and deskmats produced in Europe are planned for 2024

- with werk.technica & friends program we are expanding our keyboard offering in 2024 in collaboration with selected designers

2023 has been a turbulent year for the keyboard community and we want to thank you for your support, patience and trust. Thank you all for being on this ride with us.

werk.technica team wishes you an exciting 2024, see you in the next year everyone!

Hey gang,

as usual a long read incoming, scroll down for tl;dr.

First of all, we want to thank you for your patience, it’s a longer ride than expected. Now 10 months after the start of the production, we are getting close to finalize the production of Werk One R.1.

Where is my Werk?

The CNC and the coating of the metal parts is finished, all copper units are now finished too. The production of PCBs is finalized, those are tested and passed QC. Here some freshly shot copper and brass pics from our manufacturing partner:

During the factory QC in August, it became apparent that large percentage of polycarbonate tops had issues. The problem was the polycarb block that the factory received and some flaws became apparent only during the QC. We had to reorder polycarbonate and completely reproduce the affected polycarbonate units, which was done in September. This wasn’t our only setback with polycarbonate, the units came out well when we first manufactured and stored them, but during pretty big temp fluctuation in this time of the year, we found another issue. The threaded inserts for both badges and future modules have been a bit too many for polycarb, which led the polycarbonate to be prone to cracking. This might have become an issue during shipping from our factory to Germany and then to you. To prevent this, we are redoing the threads in polycarbonate, reducing the number of threaded inserts.

Apart of that we placing the final serialization engravings on our badges.

Right now, those last units are being finalized. After that the boards will be packed up and shipped to us. We are expecting the factory to ship to us to Germany first weeks of November. After that the boards will be QC in our warehouse in Germany and shipped to you.

What about the MKEU buyers?

Right now, MKEU buyers are looking at a similar ETA. Despite the problems that MKEU had with every single payment step we had to do together which definitely impacted the production timeframe, MKEU is currently almost on track just being 1 smaller packaging payment behind. This should not affect the fulfillment. Most of the major current payments have been placed by MKEU. Personally I am rather confident about the QC process at MKEU, despite all the management issues they faced this year, they got a very experienced QC team that fulfilled many big runs.

Should you still have any unanswered MKEU tickets, kindly send me your ticket number per DM and we forward your request directly to their support team with a big fat reminder. Saying this, we don’t have any more insights into how MKEU manages their business, nor we have any control over it, what we can do is, try our best to have your back.

So, what’s our ETA?

We very much hope, that we start shipping out the first units this year, much will come down to the shipping speed to Germany and the customs process. We will keep you updated on it in the Werk One channel as usual with our smaller updates.

In preparation for shipping:

Over the course of last few months, we received plenty of address change requests. Each request was answered with a confirmation of address change by us. Still there is a chance that a ticket was missed. If you haven’t got a confirmation from our end – depending on your mood, wave or throw something heavy in my direction, I will look into that asap personally.

Should you require an address change, this is the best time to inform us. There will be another last call for that before the fulfillment begins.

Since we are getting A LOT of requests:

Yes, there will be some extras. We ordered a fair number of extras, though some of them might be used during QC. We will give you a definitive number after fulfillment.

Considering the interest, yes there will be Werk One R.2 probably next year.

In other news:

Werk Triad is in prototyping, we expect the first proto before the end of the year!

We are looking at 2024 for the Werk Triad R.1 likely together with Werk Instrument, to ensure that the matching of Instrument colours and coatings and corresponding Triad variants is ideal we decided to produce them together.

Currently we are working on new finishes like brushed aluminium and dual anodizing techniques, more about it soon!

Since you wisely ignored the wall of text above:

tl;dr

- Remaining Werk One Copper cnc and coating is finished and passed the factory QC

- PCBs are finalized and passed the QC

- We ran into issues with polycarbonate that are mostly resolved now

- We expect the factory to ship the units to us first weeks of November

- Despite plenty of hook ups that delayed the production, MKEU is back on track

- We hope to start shipping this year, much will come down to shipping speed to Germany and the  customs process

- If you need your shipping address changed, now is a good time. If you requested address change and the request remained unanswered – mea maxima culpa, please leave us a ticket through the page contact form or dm me on discord.

- There will be extras

- There will be R.2, likely 2024

- Triad is in prototyping with GB target sometime 2024

- Instrument will be released alongside with Triad 2024

- We are working on new finishes and coating techniques for future runs

Thanks for your patience everyone!

Zaum out

We proudly present you the Werk Triad, a 65% aek-side profile curve gasket array / top mount hybrid keyboard design.

It had been 10 months since the Werk One release and we want to thank you again for your support. Without it, finalizing the Werk Triad design wouldn’t have been possible. While the Werk Triad concept design originated sometime in 2020, the final push was this year.

The design idea behind Werk Triad was always creating an antithesis to Werk One. While Werk One has an elevated floating rear, a rather high typing angle of 8° and on purpose rather thin walls and some hollow spaces to achieve an airy clacky sound.

The Triad has:

-              A much lower typing angle of 6.3°

-              A lower front height of 1.675cm

-              An inverted curve rear

-              3-part design, unified by a multilayered inner weight element

-              Slightly thicker bezels

-              Gasket array mount you know from Werk One

-              Alternative top mount for more firm feel

The outer design elements result in a much more planted look. With much fewer hollow spaces on the inside, we aimed to create a rather thocky sounding board without the use of any foam.

As with Werk One, our main aim was to create a design that feels futuristic and nostalgic in the same time. While Werk One was blending futurism with some art-deco influences, we have been looking closely into constructivist ideas while working on the design of Werk Triad. Doing so, we stayed true to our design language utilizing curves to create the elegant design you expect from us.

The main constructivist idea was to use different classic geometrical shapes that interconnect shaping the overall design. The result is a three-part construction: 2 main bottom pieces and 1 the keyboard top interconnected by a multilayered weight shaping the artwork on the bottom body.

With this approach to Triads design, we have achieved a great flexibility in regard of the use of different materials, finishes and coatings, the possibilities are endless. As an example, Triad could have a dark polycarbonate top, with sandblasted copper / stainless steel bottom and a white copper weight with a small brass accent.  To be honest, currently we are very excited to look into different finishes like powder coat and PVD and different materials like stainless steel and white copper for different keyboards parts.

This flexibility in use of materials gives us much more options for the price range of different variants too. The cheaper variants of Triad are estimated to be 15% less than aluminum Werk One units, while we still will be able to use copper and brass in those designs.

As with Werk One we want you to experience the full circle of development and production process of the Werk Triad. In August 2023 the first round of prototyping begins, the second should follow early 2024. With the second round we will finalise the modular aspect of keyboard, which will mean progress for Werk One modules as well.

According to our production partners, we should expect no more than 2 prototyping rounds with the current design. Depending on the prototyping results, Triad run can be expected anytime Q2-Q4 2024. 

You will find the renders (its.hymn is a hero) in much higher res on our discord, we look forward to hear your feedback and talk about the design.

We will be showing the design elements like the bottom artwork of the design and other as we hope interesting details in the coming weeks and month. Off to new horizons!

Zaum out