Prices shown in EUR INCLUDE 19% german VAT which will be REMOVED or CHANGED according to your location at checkout AFTER shipping address has been entered.
The CNC production of Werk One is finished. Most of the units are coated and passed the QC. Polycarbonate units are being sandblasted and tested for tolerances right now and some of the copper units might require recoating because of the fast oxidation (copper oxidizes already during the CNC process).
To sum it up, we believe the CNC production should be finalized by the mid/end of August the boards will go into packaging and prepared for the shipping to us in Germany.
But as the adage says “"A picture is worth a thousand words", so let’s get into it. Please note that the pictures are taken under a very bright halogen lamp factory light, they might appear on the brighter side. So like on the following pic the Moloko creme might look much whiter than it actually is:
Sera:
Solaris:
Space Cherry:
Aurora:
And a close up of Pale Peach anodisation:
Last but not least a quick showcase of one of the commission units:
The PCBs are nearly finished too, to give you a glimpse:
We uploaded slightly higher res images on our discord with a small video of shades of Solaris blue anodisation in bright sunlight.
Considering the progress and how good the things look right now, we can say that we are so far very much on track to start sending the first boards to you guys sometime this autumn. Much will come down to the shipping speed of the board to us in Germany and the QC process.
Thanks for sticking around on this journey with us!
how's your spring? It's been unusually rainy here in Tuebingen which makes the weather cooler, but the bees, wasps and other forms of young organic life are starting to find their way into werk.technica HQ, making writing this update real fun.
Well. There's going to be a lot of technical information in this update so let's get to it! Should you be bored by all the technical detail, there is a tl;dr somewhere at the bottom of this wall of text.
Back in winter 2022/23 we decided to begin the production with the most complicated part of Werk One, the monolithic curved bottom body. Most of the boards that people pre-ordered are copper and brass variants of the One. Ordering such high amounts of brass and copper was new for us, new for our factory, and new for the suppliers as well. Due to the monolithic design of Werk One, the metal had to be cut into a much larger chunk than what the suppliers are usually used to.
Another thing was that handling such a giant piece of expensive material like this was very risky for our factory employees. One misstep was enough for such a large piece to be wasted.
And finally, we had to be careful about the quality of the material we got from our suppliers. We had to order smaller chunks of copper and brass from our suppliers, produce a sample and decide if the quality of the metal was up to our standard.
All of those steps have been time-consuming, but when the large-scale production began everything fit in its place. The CNC production step of Werk One bottom parts is finished. This goes for aluminum, brass and copper pieces. Currently we are laser engraving them, which is a rather straightforward process.
Here some impressions from CNC milling process:
Werk One top parts are currently in CNC and should be finished too sometime this month.
Currently we are preparing for surface treatment which is tricky again because of how big and complex the bottom piece of Werk One design is.
Usually, the piece that goes into anodization / e-coat bath is secured by a rack. Such a rack holds 6-10 units usually, but because of the sheer size and weight of the One bottom part, we had to produce custom racks. Even our custom produced rack will fit only 6 pieces, which considerably increases the surface treatment time. Additionally, we have to be very careful with the oxidation of copper pieces since they start to oxidize right after the bead blasting process while they are on their way into the coating bath. All those steps needed a very careful planning on our end. At this point, we believe to be very much on track to deliver a product that lives up to our high quality standard.
We will cover more technical aspects of the surface treatment as well as the prototyping of Werk Instrument and the M-01 OLED module in the next update.
Apart of the main Werk One production, we are preparing the packaging. We heard you and are aware that most of you would prefer a nice case, so we are prototyping cases along side with regular packaging right now and will decide which we will go with after we receive the final round of samples of both.
Finally, we have to address the situation with mykeyboard.eu since many of you decided to purchase Werk One from them. Apart from the technical hook ups we expected, there was a production delay caused by the very slow payment to our production partner by mkeu. Their main production payment was finally placed and their part of production is on track. While legally people who purchased from mkeu are mkeu and not our customers, its important to us that this part of the run goes as smoothly as the rest. We are doing our best to keep it that way and adjust the project payment schedule with possible delays by MKEU back in mind. Still, it was our choice of distribution partner and we sincerely apologize for the delay caused and promise to be more careful with distribution partners in the future.
WHERE DOES ALL OF THAT PUT THE RELEASE DATE? We'll probably be able to start shipping sometime end of this summer / fall, depending on how fast the shipping and customs processes will be. We are expecting a limited number of extras to be available and ready to ship by that time too.
tl;dr
You’ve probably jumped here. Good on you.
Werk One bottom pieces CNC production is finished
Werk One top pieces CNC production is almost finished, with target being this month
Surface treatment is prepared with custom racks produced for Werk One only
Depending on the quality of packaging samples which we will receive soon, we will decide on the big box / case question
Mkeu buyers, the payment was placed, we have your back
Fulfillment target is end of this summer / fall
Yes, there will be a limited number of extras
Here some insights from our factory workshop, before the boards head to surface treatment.
Apart from Werk One production we are working on finalizing Werk Instrument and you can expect the reveal of Werk Triad we been working on past 2 years this summer.
there are quite a few things to cover so let’s get to it.
Due to the lengthy Chinese New Year holiday there is not much new to report regarding the production. The factory is slowly powering back up this very moment. We decided to use the time to further refine the Werk One design cosmetic side like engravings and to make final preparations for the M-01 Oled Module.
The M-01 Oled Module is supposed to be interchangeable in-between Werk One, Triad and our future designs. The challenge was creating a housing that doesn’t limit us engineering-wise in the future and fits into the design language we pursue. To achieve that, we had not only to alter the M-01 housings designs but slightly alter the Werk One top body module space too, adding more screw mounting points. Having less restrictions will allow us to implement even more modules in the future.
The prototyping of the final M-01 housings begins this coming spring, let us know what materials, finishes and colors you would like to see!
Last month we spent a lot of time refining the engravings and tiny details of regular production model, BHS and the commissions.
The idea is that each unit you receive feels unique to the user, no matter which variant you chose. As an example, the new BHS rear serialized badge:
The inner housing got new refined engravings as well. We decided to keep some things in the shadows (quite literally) to make the assembly more fun for you with few little cryptic surprises. A sneak peek:
As you might know, with each product run, we have a limited number of commission spots available. The commissions are of different complexity with custom engravings and sometimes even new models we designed according to our customers requests. To give you a few examples:
Since we continue to get new commission requests, there will be no commission spots open till the next product run. Keep an eye open for our future discord and blog for announcements or reach out directly, so we can put you on the waiting list.
As for the coming spring alongside with the M-01 Oled module we are preparing the final Werk Instrument prototype, more on that and the production process of Werk One in the next update. For high res images head to our discord .
let’s get to our first post-pre-order update and the last update of this year.
We want to thank you again for your overwhelming support. Considering the current recession, we never expected to sell out all the units, yet alone in under 6 minutes. 2022 was an incredible ride, thank you for sticking around, we are happy to have you on board.
Most popular variants of the Series One run were as expected Moloko and Pale Peach. The rarest variants will be Solaris and Aurora, which featured as timed exclusive variant in mykeyboard store as our little thank you for their prototyping support. The production phase of Werk One has already begun. Right now we are on track and plan to give you guys regular updates, as soon as there is something worthwhile to report about the production process. We spent 2022 not just polishing the Werk One design and prototyping, but we have been building up a partnership with our manufacturer and been optimizing the supply chains. Right now we are not facing any major delays.
One big question still remains: we have the option to go with custom packaging OR with a case. Custom packaging would offer a more premium unboxing experience and we could get rather creative with it. Still, we are aware that many people in the community prefer a case for their custom keyboards for plain practical reasons. Since it would be great to hear your preference, we set up a poll on our discord in the announcements channel.
2023 promises to be even more of a fun ride. Apart of Werk One manufacturing, we are entering the final prototyping phase of Werk Instrument. A 6u magnetic mount macropad. We are really looking forward to share more technical details about it soon. One of the biggest things 2023 will be the announcement of the Werk Triad, our next keyboard design. As for werktechnica.studio page, we decided to hold it back for beginning of 2023 and polish the interactive elements a little bit more. We hope that the stuff we prepared for you folks will keep you entertained while you are waiting for Werk One units to ship, especially considering the many easter eggs and behind the curtains development process sneak peeks.
We wish you happy holidays, see you next year @everyone!
Welcome to werk.technica. We hope you are having a smooth pre-order experience and have fun exploring this page.
If you are enjoying yourself and the question if werk.technica designers have been smoking the wacky-backy again doesn’t bother you too much, you might want to visit our interactive studio page too: www.werktechnica.studio. Our little hommage to Moebius and futurist 70’s design.
There you will find many artworks we created during the development process of Werk One in collaboration with the artist Dennis Kreker:
Additionally, you will find plenty of work in progress images from our old and ongoing design projects, those are hidden behind... well, let’s say you might want to explore the page a bit.
The page will go live in the next days.
It’s been a long journey for many of you who have been following the development of Werk One for the past 2 years+. Just as with the transparent development process of the design which you could experience on our discord, it will remain the same for the production of the group buy units. You will be able to follow the production process here in this blog and as usual on our discord.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with our discord server,you are welcome to drop by, it’s a fun place to stick around and chat with the team and our community: discord.com/invite/werktechnica
Right now we are collecting feedback on the page design, optimizing things and polishing remaining rough edges. Don’t hesitate to reach out with suggestions and ideas via contact form or directly on our discord.
If you have questions regarding your pre-order or want to combine orders, reach out to Zaum directly on discord or via contact form on this page.
We have a lot more going in the background that we cannot wait to reveal! =)
Have a nice stay and thanks for your ongoing support!
