So I've had my Cyborg for a bit over a year now. I will say I thoroughly enjoy it. However, there's some pretty fatal flaws in the design and materials. It may be time to look into no longer 3d printing certain parts and components and having them machined or just using better quality parts.
My primary problem has always been the fact that I am a heavy typer and 'presser of keys'. I am currently using a mechanical keyboard with 60g force Gateron Melodic switches, and those are just barely comfortable enough for me during typing, I've been legitimately thinking of moving up to cherry greens or whites. While the keypad is not a keyboard and I'm not typing, it just goes to show how much force I use when I'm typing normally. I'm not a light typist.
This comes into play with the cyborg. After taking the time and playing around to get my fingers set, I had it comfortable, then I started to play games with it and started to become accustomed to it. However during that process, I would press 'too hard' and quickly pushed the fingers out of place and alignment. The poor quality parts became apparent rather quickly. Frankly after the first time pushing it out of adjustment, the fingers were never right again. This resulted in overtightening the joints, which continued to degrade the hold. I would have expected to have a bit more resiliency for something that cost about $230 or so.
This leads to the point were here recently, the fingers would move out of alignment with even the most remote amount of force (I've gotten pretty darn good at controlling that). I'm currently in the process of replacement joints. Today I finally broke one of the joints which pretty much makes the finger for that joint useless without some sort of modification that would probably weaken the overall joint quality even after a replacement.
This is really disheartening as this is an amazing idea and overall an amazing product. I'm half tempted to put in some permanent modifications once I get the fingers reset, namely by drilling between or through the joints in such a way I can put a small bar that would prevent the joint from moving out of place again, but that would completely ruin the adjustability of the product.
Other suggestions not directly related to the joints and build quality:
- Get a pad of some sort to help with wrist fatigue on the palm rest. Some days I have to lay a cloth or something else across the palm rest to help with fatigue. That would be a nice (premium!) addition and would really help with comfort.
- Give the option to lay the thumb trigger flat. This is more subjective, but I do not like the thumb trigger being behind my thumb when it's on the joystick. I have a bad habit of hitting it and would really prefer it be down.
- Update your USB cable. I have no clue why you guys would have chosen a Mini B connector, but I haven't seen those on new products in a decade. Even Micro-B is dated at this point. Make the jump to USB-C and join the rest of the world in swapability.
My primary problem has always been the fact that I am a heavy typer and 'presser of keys'. I am currently using a mechanical keyboard with 60g force Gateron Melodic switches, and those are just barely comfortable enough for me during typing, I've been legitimately thinking of moving up to cherry greens or whites. While the keypad is not a keyboard and I'm not typing, it just goes to show how much force I use when I'm typing normally. I'm not a light typist.
This comes into play with the cyborg. After taking the time and playing around to get my fingers set, I had it comfortable, then I started to play games with it and started to become accustomed to it. However during that process, I would press 'too hard' and quickly pushed the fingers out of place and alignment. The poor quality parts became apparent rather quickly. Frankly after the first time pushing it out of adjustment, the fingers were never right again. This resulted in overtightening the joints, which continued to degrade the hold. I would have expected to have a bit more resiliency for something that cost about $230 or so.
This leads to the point were here recently, the fingers would move out of alignment with even the most remote amount of force (I've gotten pretty darn good at controlling that). I'm currently in the process of replacement joints. Today I finally broke one of the joints which pretty much makes the finger for that joint useless without some sort of modification that would probably weaken the overall joint quality even after a replacement.
This is really disheartening as this is an amazing idea and overall an amazing product. I'm half tempted to put in some permanent modifications once I get the fingers reset, namely by drilling between or through the joints in such a way I can put a small bar that would prevent the joint from moving out of place again, but that would completely ruin the adjustability of the product.
Other suggestions not directly related to the joints and build quality:
- Get a pad of some sort to help with wrist fatigue on the palm rest. Some days I have to lay a cloth or something else across the palm rest to help with fatigue. That would be a nice (premium!) addition and would really help with comfort.
- Give the option to lay the thumb trigger flat. This is more subjective, but I do not like the thumb trigger being behind my thumb when it's on the joystick. I have a bad habit of hitting it and would really prefer it be down.
- Update your USB cable. I have no clue why you guys would have chosen a Mini B connector, but I haven't seen those on new products in a decade. Even Micro-B is dated at this point. Make the jump to USB-C and join the rest of the world in swapability.
