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AM AGA | Alice Keyboard

by Crazy Designers

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byCrazy Designers

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AM AGA by Angry Miao

Crazy Designers here. The last few months have been hectic with the upcoming release of our Angry Miao CYBERBLADE wireless earbuds, but we also haven't been sitting still when it comes to keyboards. Today I'll introduce the latest thing we're working on: AM AGA.

So far, we have two keyboard styles in our lineup, namely CYBERBOARD, which has gone through several iterations, and AM HATSU, a wireless split ergo keyboard. For the last year or so, we have been thinking about what the next AM keyboard should look like. We have shared some drafts of 65% keyboards on our Discord channel, but those weren't really up to your tastes.

Images by @Da R

One of the main points of criticism was that they simply didn't have the same presence as other Angry Miao products. We always stress that we want to make products that are valuable and meaningful to people, and definitely don't want to turn Angry Miao into a money-making machine popping out boring products. So we went ahead and started thinking about how we can advance the evolution of keyboard products. For now, we believe it lies in Alice.

5-axis CNC machining

We initially considered a modular design. In other words, we would first make a base, and then divide the left and right sides into two independent sections. This would allow you to adjust the feel of the left and right sides independently. As far as we know, nobody has created a keyboard with such a layout before. And with good reason. It's not only hard to mass-produce this type of design, the difference it brings in feel doesn't really solve any problems we encounter in practice.

The manufacturing cost of such a large shell is outrageous, and so is its processing time, which exceeded 12 hours when we just started out. Later on, we made some improvements, but creating a single shell would still take us half a day. We believe five-axis CNC machining is the way forward, but that doesn't come without challenges. In fact, it even exceeds the complexity of the processing involved with AM HATSU.

We are currently encountering some problems, mainly related to the huge size of this layout. It's extremely difficult to craft its body from aluminum, since you need to take a whole piece of aluminum and then hollow it out. Also, it looks a bit large and bulky, not to mention its sharp edges make it not that suitable for day-to-day use. We have already started to improve on these problems, with success.

Layout

Based on the open source Alice Layout, we took the best of what Alice has to offer and further improved upon it. The standard-issue Alice has some limitations in terms of practicality and universality. Therefore, we got some keen Alice and split ergo keyboard fans involved to help us out perfecting the keyboard arrangement.

Adjustable Gasket Mount

Why is our Alice keyboard so thick? We cannot reveal too much at this point, but it's something truly unique. We will provide you with all the details in a future post update.

Inspired by VF-19 from Macross

Macross is one of our favorite animes. We're especially fans of the VF-series variable fighters designed by Masaharu Kawamori. The VF-19, a fighter with forward-swept wing design, has a particularly cool shape. AM AGA incorporates a hollow metal frame with a slightly forward-swept design exactly to express this specific style. It takes numerous hours of 5-axis CNC machining to achieve this hollow metal frame, but the results speak for itself.

Up to this point, we have prepared a total of 5 color schemes for AM AGA. Check them out below!

Macross VF-19

Taking its inspiration from the theater version of Macross F, we used the VF-19 ADVANCE variable fighter as the base for our color scheme.

Interstellar Ranger