XMIT Hall Effect Keyboard Delayed By Manufacturing Issues

A series of fortunate events led to the resurrection of Hall Effect switches on a soon-to-be shipping keyboard. The guy driving the XMIT Hall Effect keyboard project, José Soltren, is working with a Chinese manufacturer to make the boards and with Massdrop to distribute them. Now a series of unfortunate events--well, one unfortunate event and one case of bad timing, anyway--have delayed shipment of the unique mechanical keyboard.

Massdrop explained the reason for the delay in an email to people who signed up for the XMIT Hall Effect keyboard. “As you may know, the keyboards are done, and were scheduled to fly to our distribution center today,” the email began. “However, during the final round of quality control, the manufacturer discovered an issue with key cap fitment. Some key caps practically fell off the board, while others, took a great deal of force to remove.”

According to Massdrop, the issue likely has to do with the molds for the key cap sliders--likely, one mold in particular. They’ll have to check each board (there were 1,024 orders) to see which have been affected, and the manufacturer will need to make new sliders for those that are.

Massdrop assured buyers that the fix should be “quick,” but Chinese New Year celebrations have slowed things down by a couple of weeks. The company said it would have an update on February 16.  

For a primer on what Hall Effect switches are and how they work, head here.