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

Hey everyone,

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:

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!

Hi everyone,

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.

Thanks for all your patience! ❤

Zaum out

Hey everyone,

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 .

Stay tuned,

Zaum