1. The problem wasn't in creating the shape we wanted - that's easy with CNC. The problem was creating the cross mounting post for Cherry. The process that ended up working was somewhat as you suggested: we basically used a lathe to remove material from a standard key cap until just the post was left and then we attached the post with a good adhesive to our custom key caps. The problem with this process is that it is very expensive in terms of labor/time and requires a high degree of precision to ensure uniformity. I think I might eventually make a keyboard using Cherry MX switches using this process, but for the current project the goal is to produce at least 100 keyboards while keeping the cost down. We tried for several months to make the Cherry MX Red work, but ended up deciding Matias was the better option in this case.

2. Modding key switches works well for a single keyboard, but really causes costs to soar if used in production. This wouldn't work for us because one of the main design points of the keyboard we're working on is making it financially accessible to a wide range of people.

4. This is a fair point. Honestly, I'm not too deep into the mechanical keyboard world beyond this one project, so I don't have a good feeling for other people's use cases. My hope, though, is that people do some really strange things with these switches and start innovating in ways I wouldn't have thought of.

Thanks for all your feedback - it's been really helpful. I haven't yet updated the campaign page to reflect it all, but I will soon.