Leak-picking behavior, blind box experience, and the joy of DIY: talk about keyboard garbage bags

This article was first published on Minority, thanks to the help of Minority’s editors, the behavior of picking up leaks, blind box experience, and the joy of DIY: Talk about keyboard garbage bags - Minority (sspai.com)

Hello, I am a car that can't be fast, a keyboard player who loves to pick up trash. As the so-called Buddha relies on gold clothing, people rely on clothing. It can be said that apart from the structural shape of the keyboard itself, the keycap is the most eye-catching place on a keyboard. A good horse with a good saddle, a favorite mechanical keyboard with your favorite keycap will naturally resonate with many keyboard lovers.

Although customized keycaps are an extremely niche field, after getting in touch with them, you will find that there are so many tricks in a small keycap, which can be said to be unique. However, many keycaps are expensive and prohibitive. Among them, the special product "keycap garbage bag" has attracted the interest of many players due to its low price and large quantity. Reminiscent of the popularity and turmoil of the "blind box" market in the past few years, many players will hesitate again.

This time I am here to unveil the veil of garbage bags for you, so that you can better understand and choose the products that suit you.

The earliest post I could find on the Internet about keycap garbage bags came from an information post called Signature Plastics Grab Bag and more in 2012-Signature Plastics also became the first manufacturer to start selling keycap garbage bags for a long time .

The problem with the "Grab Bag" is what's inside. After that, judging from the products received by netizens and the introduction of the official website:

Because in the Chinese context, there is a big difference between blind boxes, lucky bags and garbage bags. At present, the content of the default garbage bag is basically impossible to prescribe a whole set of good products. Some dealers also sell blind boxes, lucky bags and garbage bags at the same time. In the circle, it is translated as a keycap garbage bag, not a blind box and a lucky bag.

Now we can give a simple definition of the contents of the garbage bag: individual keycaps from different batches and different sets that may be defective or even completely unusable, and then they are mixed in large quantities, randomly loaded, and sold to customers.

From the SP garbage bag product comment area

After the launch of SP's keycap trash bag, many keyboard lovers are very enthusiastic about it, and the price of the keycap trash bag has also risen all the way. From the initial $10 bag of 1,000 keycaps, to today’s $60 bag of 800 keycaps and $90 bag of 1,300 keycaps, plus global postage, a set of SP keycap garbage bags shipped overseas The domestic price is enough to buy a set of good quality two-color keycaps in China.

In the production process, due to technological reasons, it is understandable to produce defective keycaps, and whether it is two-color injection molding or secondary molding process, the production of keycaps is carried out in units of "one set" rather than "one set". One", when one or several defective products are produced in a set of keycaps, the entire set of keycaps cannot be circulated and sold normally.

Before the garbage bag is produced, these defective products are generally crushed and used as trial waste for new molds or directly discarded.

In fact, if you want to rekey, it means that you need to re-produce a set of keycaps. Of course, the set of keycaps produced here does not necessarily mean the production of a complete set of keycaps. In fact, you can use the keycaps to divide the Kit ( It can be understood as a subset of the set keycap set) to simply understand some characteristics of the injection molding production process: a set of keycaps actually has multiple sets of molds, and these molds are divided into large and small molds.

Left: Keycap Main Kit, Right: Special Letter Area Kit

Assuming that there are some defective products in the letter area, if the keys need to be repaired, at least one set of letter area keycaps must be re-produced to complete another set. Of course, the above is just a rough method. High-level keycap manufacturers will make more efficient subdivision molds according to the actual situation and accumulated experience, thereby reducing the cost of the overall production process. However, all changes remain the same, limited by the mold, two-color keycap manufacturers cannot accurately perform a single key replacement.

And for manufacturers who focus on sublimation technology , especially the manufacturers of XDA height keycaps, can almost achieve the lowest cost of supplementary keys. Although the dye-sublimation injection molding is also the same set of injection molding, but different from the two-color limited by the characters, the dye-sublimation process relies on the flexibility in printing, so that they can use the unprinted height and length when there are defective products in the key position. The same material is printed and supplemented. In any case, there will definitely be additional costs for rekeying, but there is no doubt that compared to scrapping a set of keycaps, it is worthwhile for the sublimation factory to spend a small amount of money to repair them.

The garbage bags of subsequent manufacturers are actually basically the same as the SP composition of the earliest adopting this kind of gameplay. If you buy a pack of garbage bags, you will most likely be able to separate the following three types of things from it:

In fact, it is different from what many people think. Although the garbage bag is called a garbage bag, there are many keycaps that can be used normally. The defects of the general keycaps are mainly concentrated in the problems of surface character injection molding and printing and surface scratches. , these keycaps are often rejected at the quality inspection stage or returned through aftermarket channels.

There are scratches

The proportion of this part of the keycaps is quite lucky, but generally speaking, the number is not too small. The main source is some keycaps produced due to key replacement. Since they cannot be sold as a set, they can often be collected in the garbage bag until last year. and keycaps from earlier years. Among them, what I am most looking forward to is the unique personalized keycap of the set. Many players make this dumpling just for this vinegar.

Since they are all called garbage bags, how can there be less garbage. There is no doubt that manufacturers will stuff most of the keycaps that cannot be sold through normal channels into it. After all, garbage bags are sold by the catty, so the more the better. The so-called garbage may be broken bases and surfaces, or it may contain various semi-finished products, such as products that are only half-molded, whether they can be called keycaps needs to be questioned.

Photographed by netizens on the forum

Garbage is risky, so be careful when buying. Due to its characteristic of not guaranteeing quality but only quantity, you may still encounter such problems after sorting out several bags of garbage bags:

In addition to SP, there are also many keycap manufacturers who have begun to sell their garbage bags one after another. The differences between different manufacturers are very obvious, such as different heights.

Keycaps vary widely in height

SP's keycap garbage bag is mixed with several different heights, while other manufacturers, some only make the original factory height, and Domikey's keycap garbage bag is clearly marked with SA and factory height for sale separately. So take this into consideration before buying. In fact, many people don't expect to collect a set of keycaps of the same height through the keycap garbage bag. But for many players who only use a certain type of height, it is still very important.

The lack of keys is an attribute of the garbage package itself, or if there is no lack of keys, is it still called a garbage package? As for the solution, it may be to buy more garbage bags. The most unsatisfactory thing must be the lack of keys in the letter area. Once the keys in the letter area are missing, it is as difficult as heaven to fill them up. And the large key area may not be able to open the key positions you need.

Missing Z key

DMK keycap trash bag from JunW, https://www.zfrontier.com/app/flow/2E519jAwrj5M

JTK trash bag from a puddle of lard, https://www.zfrontier.com/app/flow/2qaazMqZ90XX

There is no way to avoid repeated keystrokes, or, from a manufacturer's point of view, this is inevitable.

The defective products referred to here refer to garbage that is completely unusable because the chrysanthemum or keycap is damaged.

Due to the special nature of the product, the trash bag cannot be returned or exchanged. After buying a garbage bag, it is very difficult to sell the common buttons in the second-hand market. You still have to think twice before buying garbage bags. Next, I will talk about which players can consider trying to buy keycap garbage bags for fun.

Such players are usually interested in keycap craftsmanship, and at the same time want to buy a large number of keycaps for disassembly and comparison at the lowest possible cost, then the keycap garbage bag is definitely the best choice, which satisfies both low cost and A large number of these two requirements, and the risk of keycap garbage bags are not the focus for them.

Such players usually need cheap keycap materials for painting and creation, including dipping and polishing. However, it should be noted that if you are a player who wants to play with dip-dyed keycaps, please do not buy ABS material keycaps, because ABS keycaps are not good at high temperature and will often deform during the cooking process. ABS is often used as the raw material for two-color keycaps, and the two-color keycaps can be used for polishing. It is also a good choice to use the two-color keycaps in the garbage bag as a material for practice.

Poetry Shooting Keycap Polishing

This kind of players are the main audience of keycap garbage bags. Collecting personalized keycaps and experiencing the joy of digging treasures and opening treasure chests are just for these personalized keycaps, so they buy these garbage bags.

For this type of players, the requirement for the keycaps is that they can be used, and the height is OK. They don’t care about the order of the keycap characters. It is very simple to get a keyboard from the keycap garbage bag.

After talking about the basic information of the keycap garbage bag and the applicable crowd, let’s take a look at the current market environment of the keycap garbage bag based on the current actual situation.

At present, many domestic manufacturers have also begun to play the game of "keycap garbage bags", such as JTK, Domikey's keycap garbage bags, etc. At the same time, many platforms and dealers have also begun to sell keycap garbage bags, such as the mixed bag of zFrontier equipment front line , Kupin Shijia’s garbage bags, and players specializing in the field of garbage bags sell garbage bags on the second-hand trading platform.

Most of the keycap garbage bags will be replenished and sold from time to time. These keycap garbage bags are not products that should be sold normally in essence, but as an attachment, a fun that belongs to a small number of fans. Many players The mentality when buying a keycap garbage bag should be similar to "Zhou Yu hits the yellow cap, one is willing to fight and the other is willing to suffer."

But regardless of the title of "keycap garbage bag", are these products that have been changed hands layer by layer, are they still keycap garbage bags in the most primitive sense? Let's take a look at the real face of keycap garbage bags on the market today.

The first is the question of whether the garbage bag is "natural". What is "all natural"? The less human intervention the product content has, the more "natural" it is in my opinion. So are all keycap trash bags "natural"? Obviously not.

From the production process, we can see that most of the keycap garbage bags come from the keycaps that were eliminated due to unqualified quality inspections and the backlog of inventory during the production process, while others come from after-sales, and the number of after-sales often depends on sales and level of craftsmanship.

These keycaps can basically be regarded as unselected, all picked out by workers on the assembly line and then gathered together for indiscriminate packaging. From a logical point of view, for the factory, carefully selecting the defective products inside is tantamount to looking for pearls in the trash can. Whether it is labor costs or time, it is far inferior to reproducing good products. Fast and low consumption. And even carefully selected products may not be able to be sold to distributors and the market as a set, and profits are greatly reduced. For factories, the sales channels of goods are often limited, and they also face problems of inventory backlog and time. Therefore, the keycap garbage bag produced in the factory is often the least human intervention, and the most "pure natural".

From a dealer's point of view, it's quite different. Most of the defective products in the hands of dealers come from after-sales and returned goods. Of course, it is not ruled out that the returned goods will be resold. However, the existence of the touch party makes some products have to be touched again and again. Keycaps are different from many products and cannot be refurbished. Wear and tear is permanent. Once scratches appear, they cannot disappear. And some products may become "defective products" due to this reason, and at the same time, rekeying will also make dealers hoard some "defective products".

Seeing this, do you think that buying garbage bags sold by dealers is a steady profit? In fact, for dealers, the value of keys in each partition is different, such as personalized keycaps, letter areas, etc., the value will be much higher than that of the number key area and other Kits. At the same time, dealers also have more channels and methods for product sales, such as putting high-value personality areas and letter areas into lottery and promotional activities as small prizes or gifts in the prize pool to promote consumption. And although the "keycap garbage bag" they organize and sell independently may have a relatively high yield rate, it often lacks the surprise we want-personalized keycaps. Of course, dealers will also sell garbage bags directly from the factory. There is basically no need to worry about hands and feet in this part, because the labor cost is much more expensive than the value that these garbage bags can produce.

If there are still some business rules to follow no matter whether it is a factory or a dealer, and there is still a limit to manual intervention in the contents of the keycap garbage bag, then the keycap garbage bag of individual sellers is completely intensive. If a few good personalized keycaps can be produced, this bag of keycap garbage can be regarded as a return of cost. As for the garbage bags sold in the secondary market, the contents inside are entirely up to the conscience of the seller. Whether it is "unopened" or what the prerequisites are, all of this is fully up to the seller. Of course, if you just want to buy some miscellaneous keys at a low price as spares, such as large keycaps, then some low-priced individual sellers sell garbage bags. But in fact, as long as you buy a pack of garbage bags, the inside The number of large keys is completely enough for you to spare several keyboards. The keycap garbage bags purchased from individual sellers may be completely "natural", but they may also be "purely artificial".

That said, if you are still interested in trash bags and want to try your luck, let’s take a look at how to play with keycap trash bags.

The first thing to be clear is the choice of craftsmanship and material of the keycap. I personally recommend the keycap process to choose a two-color keycap, preferably a keycap with a secondary molding process. In terms of materials, if dip-dyeing is not required, then the mainstream materials of keycaps on the market, ABS and PBT, can be selected.

But it is worth mentioning that the mainstream two-color keycaps are basically made of ABS material, so there is not much room for choice, and there will be more considerations in the future.

Why is it not recommended to buy the keycap garbage bag of sublimation process?

The first point is that the bottom-line price of sublimation keycaps has dropped significantly to the naked eye in recent years, and there have even appeared many almost malignant low prices. For Mengxin, this may be a good thing, but there is no doubt that, This kind of market environment that only cares about price but not technology and design is very dangerous. Dye-sublimation keycaps are a keycap category with a very low threshold and a huge gap between the upper and lower limits. And as I described in the composition of garbage bag keycaps before, these keycaps often come from products that fail quality inspections. Due to the gap in injection molding process, the yield rate of different manufacturers is different. Take the space as an example. Generally speaking, as long as there is no problem with the mold of the two-color keycap, the production of the keycap will basically maintain a very stable level; It is often more unstable than the two-color keycap, and this will further lead to more uncontrollable situations in the product.

The second point is that there are currently a mixed bag of dye-sublimation manufacturers. I can’t tell which of the low-priced companies really have their own factories, or whether they just pull two dye-sublimation machines and start working, or they are covered with leather. It came out for distribution, and the proliferation of sublimation piracy has dealt a great blow to many small and micro original authors. Purchasing garbage bags is essentially to help manufacturers reduce production costs. Purchasing these keycap garbage bags with extremely low production costs is even a profitable model for some three-no manufacturers.

Under what circumstances is it more cost-effective to choose a sublimation keycap garbage bag?

The answer is that you need a lot of keycaps for use, including but not limited to dip-dyeing keycaps, making hand-painted keycaps, etc. At this time, buying cheap and large bowls of sublimation keycaps is perfect, and there are also garbage bags without engraved keycaps. for selection.

Trash comes from production, which is at the heart of the Keycap Trash Kit. The factory is the source, and the garbage bag is one of the tributaries. How many different types of keycaps are included in the keycap garbage bag mainly depends on how many the factory has produced in the past six months to one year. Taking SP keycaps as an example, during the high-production period of SP, the types of keycaps in the garbage bag can be said to be in full bloom, and the probability of producing a variety of keycaps with different personalities has also increased. In the same way, assuming that the factory has produced very limited types of keycaps in the past six months to a year, then naturally there is not much oil and water in the garbage bag. For example, in JTK's garbage bag some time ago, almost half of the keycaps opened were from the same keycap.

After a manufacturer starts selling garbage bags, there will often be players on online forums posting their "results" after buying garbage bags. Have a certain understanding of the color and category of the keycaps in the bag. But this is not absolute, and it is necessary to analyze the production situation of the above-mentioned manufacturers themselves.

Some manufacturers will use the name of "keycap garbage bag", but they are actually selling in blind boxes, which has a feeling of "selling dog meat". Of course, these words are often accompanied by price increases. If the bag is sold at a price you think is unacceptable, you don’t need to buy it. At the same time, you should also pay attention to some other consumption-inducing activities to avoid investing too much money, and the gain outweighs the gain.

In fact, friends who have an understanding of the customized keycap market will find that it is actually more difficult to combine the above experience summary into practice. There are not many options. But I personally think that with the development of the entire market, more and more excellent keycap manufacturers will appear, and with the increase in choices, these methods and experiences will definitely provide help to friends who play keyboards.

Whether it is buying a keycap garbage bag or the process of playing the keyboard itself, I think the mentality is very important. Friends who play keyboards often ask me the question "is it worth it?" Thinking about it carefully, since I first came into contact with mechanical keyboards eight or nine years ago, I learned about keyboards in forums, and now I start writing some articles. The keyboard market has undergone earth-shaking changes, but I think, playing The original intention of the keyboard is still the same, the keyboard can bring me some other fun.

For manufacturers, buying and selling keycap garbage bags is a way to reduce costs, and we players sometimes have a mentality of "he makes money more uncomfortable than I lose money". Holding such a mentality is actually very difficult. It is difficult to play and fun, and at the same time, in addition to "cost-effectiveness", we should perhaps think about "cost-effectiveness". For me, a suitable keycap trash bag is actually a product with a good "cost-effectiveness". From purchase to unpacking, it is not necessary to find treasures buried deep in the soil during the process of sorting the keycaps. It is necessary to develop a lot of personalized keycaps and find happiness in the results, and many times it will return without success. Enjoy this process, which is what I think is the core of playing keyboards. After all, if "value" is blindly used as the criterion for judging all products, then today's mechanical keyboard market will not be so flourishing.