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Frusta Experimental - Cerakote Numpad | More Photos Added

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Description

Frusta Experimental
by G14D from PicoLab, Hong Kong

This IC will last for 2 weeks, IC Form: Here
For Chinese buyers, there is also an IC now hosting on ZFrontier, visit the IC here

I received some feedback from you guys! Here are some quick response.

Bluetooth or wireless connections?

Will definitely consider adding them, I'm now doing some research on them.

Will there be chameleon coat as an option?

Holy fck...glad you asked man, glad you asked...If you didn't, I won't even know such beautiful coating exists in the world...
There are some local service provider in Hong Kong do provides chameleon coating service but they're expensive AF.
I'll ask them the coating price first, if it is affordable, I'll consider this option.

Wavez green!

Well, as for Cerakote, they provide lots of military purposed green colour, which I don't really like.
But there is also an neon green option, shall we try that?

Add supports of rotary encoder?

Sure, but not now, I'll add a encoder to my next 65% Frusta Fundamental Kit.

Considering an Asia vendor?

As for shipping me personally do have the ability to ship all orders by myself, especially for China and Asia region orders. For worldwide, Since my family runs a exporting company for decades, we ship all sorts of products around the world. Although it is not a must to have a vendor in Asia, but I'll first consider Thic Thock if I need one. First of all, Jeff is actually a friend of mine. Besides, Thic Thock is a Hong Kong-based vendor.

When is the GB going to start?

As I mentioned early this week, there are some problems with the first prototype, I need to order a new one. If everything goes well with the new prototype, the GB will start from before mid-October, most likely in early-October.

Here are some new prototype photos taken by Bokkey yesterday, they look stunning!

Check out Bokkey's website here and Instagram here.

Greetings.

This is G14D from Hong Kong, the founder and the only member of PicoLab. Frusta is the first mechanical keyboard project of mine, I designed both of the case and the PCB. During the development stage, I received lots of help and advises from the mechanical keyboard community, especially the support from the lovely Hong Kong mechanical keyboard family. This keeb won't even exist without them. Thank you, my brothers and sisters! (still not sure if there are sisters or not though...

Story

I assembled my first custom mechanical keyboard in March 2019, it's a plain-vanilla, 60% Cherry MX silver keyboard. From then on, I became a keyboardholic, I built at least 10 DIY kits in the past 12 months. The most legit reason that I started to build custom keyboards is that they look so different when comparing to the stock keyboards on the market, I want something different from the majority, something special. As the same reason, I eventually developed my keyboard project.

Design inspiration

As I joined this community only before a year and a half ago, I missed tones of GBs and most of my kits are purchased from the aftermarket. During my journey of me finding treasures in the aftermarket, I noticed that scratches on cases affect the price significantly as the case becomes quite "stylish". To fix this issue the first thing I think of is to "replace" the scratched case with an intact one, to be more explicit, replace the damaged side of the case. Here comes Frusta.

"Frusta" is the plural form of frustum, and this kit is assembled by 6 frustums, that's where the project name comes from. The Numpad is the first product of Frusta project so it's named Experimental, the naming principle is based on the alphabetical order. Therefore, the next product of Frusta project will be named Frusta Fundamental (mostly a 60% keyboard). One of my favourite keeb is CA66, I appreciate those huge and heavy looking keyboards. Frusta is not that vintage, but heavy enough.

The top frustum is inspired by NZXT H1 and I'm a huge fan of Yorushika.

Case specification

Material: 6061-T6 Aluminium (might change to 7075 for international groupbuyers)
Plate: Brass, 1.6mm / Plateless
Typing angle: 7 deg. (Bottom frustums support different typing angles such as 5 deg. and 13 deg. will be added later)
Layout: Numpad / Ortho 6x4
Finishing: Anodized / Cerakote (recommended)
Size(mm): 143.8*96.2*21.1-38.2
Weight: 730 gram (Fully assembled, with switches and keycaps)

PCB specification

Black colour when mass production
Multi-layouts solderable with leds / Single layout hotswap with per-switch RGB backlits
Fully supports QMK/VIA
with ESD protection
Type-C-to-A and Type-C-to-C Connection, fully functional when directly plugged into a MBP's type-c port

Pricing

Frusta E Standard Kit (anodized): Around $150 + shipping fee
Frusta E Standard Kit (Cerakote): Around $220 + shipping fee
Extra PCB, plate and frustums are for sale, I'll update the price after some calculations.

The standard kit comes with:

6 Frustums
PCB(solderable or hotswap, optional)
Plate
Screws
O-ring gaskets for mounting
Nice packaging

Colour Options

Frusta E allows buyers to mix and match colours (e.g. black bot and top + white sides), extra frustums are for sale to create more colour combinations. the details will be explained in the GB. Colour options might change due to the feedback of this IC.

Cerakote (Limitied, 100 spots worldwide)
Anodize(Unilimited)

Cerakote colour references

For international GB:

H-136 Snow white / C-242 Hidden white (confirms, but choose which white you prefer)
E-100 Black out (confrimed)
H-127Navy blue (TBD)
H-217Q Bright purple (TBD)
PMB-1371 Cherry blossom pink (TBD)
H-294 Midnight bronze (TBD)

For Hong Kong Fellows Only:

H144 Corvette Yellow

Cerakote by Fight Club Custom Coating, Hong Kong.

https://www.cerakote.com/applicators/31921/fight-club-custom-coating

Anodize colour references:

Silver (Confrimed)
Red (TBD)
Pantone 10252 C - Grey blue (Confrimed)
Pantone 10293 C - Turquoise (TBD)
Pantone 10233 C - Violet (TBD)
Pantone 10150 C - Coral (TBD)
Pantone 10247 C - Royal blue (TBD)
Pantone 10391 C - Iron black (TBD)

*Gold anodized top frustums are for sale so combination like this becomes possible, but there won't have a gold anodize option, as I don't like it

Mounting systems

Frusta support multiple mounting systems:

O-ring gasket mount
Top mount
Tray mount
O-ring gasket mount OR top mount, AND tray mount

O-ring gasket mount is recommended. When the o-rings are removed, it becomes a top-mount keyboard.

Tray mount option is reserved for plateless / hotswap PCBs. when using a hotswap PCB, the plate is mounted to the top frustum using O-ring gaskets, and the PCB is mounted on the bottom frustum.

Unique feature of Frusta

Is more accurate to call Frusta a keyboard assembly structure more than a keyboard. As frusta is assembled by 6 frustums, the structure of Frusta allows users to modify their keyboard by changing only one frustum. By saying that, I mean not only different colour combinations but appearence and typing angles.

As an example, the early design of Frusta E's top frustum is actually flat. The appearence is different, but the structure is actually the same.

Let's go back to the sketch stage of Frusta E to talk about another example, there are actually more than one design about it's side view. I eventually pick the first one, but if I want to recreate the abandoned design IRL someday, the only thing I need to do is changing the bottom frustum. Long story short, modulization.

I'll partially open source the Frusta case, users can definitely make their own frustums to fit in the keyboard, but let's discuss that after the GB.

(Current design)

(Abandoned, this one is actually quite similar to AKI-S)

More render images

Prototype

I received my prototype before I open this IC, The pink and white are paint instead of Cerakote. I know...they look painful, I hate them too. but at least they proved my concept works, right? I'm extremely unsatisfied with those prototypes and I'll change another factory to make some new prototypes ASAP. If prototype R2 fails again, then R3, if R3 fails, then R4...Frusta E is for sale only until I'm satisfied with the prototypes. I hope the GB can be started around mid-October this year.

Prototype photos by bokkey:

Check out Bokkey's website here and Instagram here.