Brock, you are right, it will happen eventually.
Of course providing a "kit" means we would have to do all the hard work and the manufactures would not have to have all that high priced labor hanging about.
Like I pointed out getting high quality lenses for assembly is difficult and the assembly itself is tough.
Given some of the new, high quality composites that can be assembled around the optical part it would not surprise me to see binoculars 3-D printed around the optical glass, prisms and lenses.
We were all hoping that CNC machining of parts would have dropped prices but what it did was up performance and quality.
Brock, think we could hire some tech guys to print us our dream 7x42 porro's?
Art
Or even 7x42 retro roofs. I'd been advocating retro styling for a long time. The auto industry has successfully done it with the PT Cruiser, the Chevy HHR, Chevy Camaro, Dodge Challenger, Ford Mustang, etc. The only retro car failure I can think of was the two-seater 2002 T-Bird, which I thought looked great, but for some reason never caught on with buyers. I think it was too pricey.
I don't know if Zeiss's patent for the 7x42 Dialyt is still intact, but let's say it is, what if it licensed some company to make them again, and they were made on 3-D printers? They could sell them for no more and perhaps less than they sold for when they were new.
Of course, they needn't be exact clones, it could be updated just as the cars are. For example, the Dialyt could have 4-click stop, twist-up eyecups, dielectric prism coatings, and Loutec coatings. What's better than an improved on ClassiC?
Ditto for the old Porros that were great, but need updated coatings, longer ER, twist-up eyecups, and WPing.
There's a whole untapped retro market out there, and the time is nye for tapping it before the baby boomers end up in assisted living facilities. I think there might be some interest in GenX optics aficionados, who grew up using their parents' retro bins, but largely the market is boomers.
So let's get out those 3-D printers and let the retro-cloning begin!
B.B. (Baby Boomer) Brock