As many of you know, it's Chinese New Year again. This means that nearly all production and logistics in China have come to a stop and will resume in 2 to 3 weeks time.
To clear things up a little, Southpaw 65+ and Southpaw FS are being made at the same factory. The factory that produced the first production run of Lunar has been abandoned and the second production run has been moved to a new factory which was referred to us through another maker in the community.
Southpaw 65+
Aluminum cases were finished around week 3 of January and went through QC but there were a handful of rejected cases and quite a few rejected sets of angled feet that had been over-processed in the hand finishing stage. Those units have been re-machined, hand finished and sandblasted and are now awaiting QC and then Anodizing. They will be completed after Chinese New year.
If you are a customer from Candy Keys, the situation as it stands is that the bent plates and alloy plates have arrived at them. The PCBs are still at KPrepublic due to a paperwork issue on their end. I will be working with them to clear out the paperwork and get it to the courier as soon as their CNY break ends.
Southpaw Full Size
The GH thread was updated with the previous delay which was an issue with the machining of the bottom halves of the case. The side cuts are machined top down and a mistake was made in the machining process which resulted in more material being removed than needed. The bottom halves need to be re-machined. They were put in the machining queue early last week but the factory was not able to get to them before many of the staff left for the Chinese New Year break. They will be machined, hand finished, then sandblasted and anodized after the factory starts back up again after the break.
All brass parts and aluminum plates have completed CNC. They will be sandblasted when it is time to anodize to avoid the parts being affected by oxidization.
Acrylic plates were cut stateside and are finished and QC'd.
PCBs were produced in the same factory at the same time as lunar and have been QC'd and spot checked for quality.
Lunar 65% AEK
Prototype from the new factory arrived 99% perfect. Quality and tolerances are overall greater than the last factory. The new place has a near perfect track record according to other vendors in terms of quality.
The production run has been paid for and the aluminum has been purchased. The second new production run will start after Chinese New Year.
Resin shifts were finished this week but had some minor issues with fitment of the stem. The mold for the shifts are being remade and is waiting on a 3d printed stem to cast the mold off of. ETA of these is about two weeks out.