Given the global crisis that has shaken the world, we hope that you are all staying safe in your homes and taking the necessary precautions to be fit and healthy.
We believe that the health and safety of our employees and staff come first, thus we have decided to close our office and warehouse until things get better.
Spain is the second country in Europe with the highest cases of the coronavirus. And now that the government has declared a nationwide lockdown, we are all bound to stay in our homes.
But the Dygma team is in high spirits and we will continue to be working from home until further notice.
Our dedicated customer support will still be open and available during the normal working hours 💪
The repair services will be put on-hold as Manel is now bound to his house to take care of his 2 crazy children 😂
New orders and other deliveries will be frozen until the 1st of April. Hopefully, by then, everything gets back to normal and everyone is safe.
We will closely follow what the health experts say and will inform you of any updates!
China reopens for businesses - second batch coming soon!
On the other side of the world, China is already experiencing fewer cases of the coronavirus. Some companies have already reopened and started operations.
Our factories are nearly 100% operational as life there begins to slowly get back to normal.
We are happy that we can now start the second batch of Raise keyboards. However, the consequences of the global pandemic have also affected our production costs.
In addition, we had a few issues with the first batch of keyboards. Around 2% of our users experienced malfunctioning cables. Another 2-3% had palm pads that were defective. These units should have been discarded in the assembly factory.
Overall, we strive to have 0% issues from our customers so we are increasing the quality control and changing some suppliers.
With all these changes, - improving suppliers and the increase in the costs of components, - we might increase the price of the Raise.
Here is a break down of how we are fixing each component:
CABLES
Video from a customer showing his cable malfunctioning
We had a few customers emailing us about having issues with their cables. Some would say that one half of the keyboard wouldn’t work or that they would get disconnected suddenly.
This was mainly because the connection between the connector and the wires was weaker than how it should have been.
We've had a few cases of this happening after a few months of usage. If you’re experiencing this, please contact us.
We are changing our cable supplier. We decided that to improve the quality of the cables meant working with a supplier who had better quality control.
The new supplier will improve the soldering of the connectors. We are expecting to receive samples from them soon.
The outgoing quality control check for the cables will also be stricter so this issue should not happen anymore.
PALM PADS
We are also changing palm pads suppliers. It’s been a long winding battle with palm pad suppliers and this will be our fourth one 😳
You can read more about the development of the palm pads in this article, A cool solution for our palm pads.
The palm pads have always been a tricky component because of its irregular shape and its materials: PU skin and silicone.
The silicone is supposed to make the palm pads stick firmly to the top metal panel without using glue. The combination of all of this makes it a complex component.
We have had some people complain that their palm pads wouldn't stick properly at the edges or that they had irregular bumps on the surface.
Photos of some customers' palm pads
We weren’t happy with the quality of our old supplier so we have changed to a new one.
The new supplier has already sent us a photo of the new palm pad sample. We will have a batch of 500 units made in advance so we can check the quality of the new palm pads.
WOBBLING OF THE METAL CASE
Some keyboards would wobble in different circumstances. Some wobbled on one side when they were split, and some when they were attached.
This is actually not a big problem and could be fixed by hand. But we think this issue should be corrected in the factories before the products are shipped.
The wobbling is mainly related to:
- The anodizing and finishing of the metal top panel.
- The combination of tolerances with all the other components.
- The irregular pressures on the screws.
We will try to improve the process so we can eliminate the wobbling. This could also be solved by screwing in some keyboards by hand.
This just means we need to improve the quality standards in the factory.
JOINT METAL PIECE
We will also improve the joint metal piece.
We mentioned in our older updates that we had some issues with the bending of the joint and how it wouldn’t stick to the base.
We found a solution for this problem and will implement it in the next batch.
We will be stricter with quality control and will tell the assembly line to not accept any defective joint component.
SHIPPING
Being that it was the first time we had ever shipped a product internationally, we inevitably encountered many issues.
We learned a lot from this experience and we have modified our systems so that we can handle the issues better.
Thanks to one of the newest members of our team, Jairo Pascual, we have greatly improved our shipping and logistics processes! We are already sending out keyboards 2-3 working days after they have been ordered. (This was before the lockdown.)
Jairo and Manel in our warehouse in Valencia, Spain
One big issue that occurred during the first batch of shipment, which we don’t want to happen ever again, was that some of the boxes arrived at the customer’s doorstep completely crushed! That was a problem.
Good thing the travel case was strong enough to protect the keyboards.
When a customer receives a package and the box is crushed, this might give them a bad impression of the product and also the company. We want to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.
Another issue was that a handful of orders got lost during delivery. Some took such a long time to get delivered, like 2 months! We weren’t expecting the delivery process to take that long and we didn’t anticipate that some keyboards would get lost.
But this is part of the learning process.
Because of all of these issues, we decided to not work with the previous courier and to work with DHL.
When do we expect the second batch
We have planned to start mass production in the next few weeks and get the keyboards ready to be delivered by June.
We are still working with this timeline but ultimately, it will depend on the situation here with the Spanish government and the availability of our components if everything continues to improve in China.
Manel is scheduled to go to China for mass production but if traveling outside the EU is not possible then we would need to consider sending all the keyboards here after they are assembled.
This would mean that we will do the OQC or outgoing quality control here in our warehouse. We would then ship all orders from Spain. This will be more expensive for the company but for now, this is our Plan B.
What to expect in the second batch of Raise keyboards
Not only are we improving the overall quality of the Raise, but we also have a bit of a surprise to give out!
We’ll talk about this more in our next update when things are 100% confirmed. Until then, we’ll leave you guys to your imagination.
Choose the color, switches and keycaps that fit your needs.
10% DISCOUNT ON ALL PRE-ORDERS
Included: free travel case, free shipping, and more goodies! Delivery date June 2020.
FOLLOW US (AND DON’T MISS ANY OF OUR AWESOME CONTENT!)
Youtube
