Are any of the objectives of top spotting scopes hand finished?
What about medium and lower priced scopes?
If hand finished, how many optical workers have the ability to hand finish objectives?
In which countries?
Are young technicians being trained to do this?
In Britain it is very difficult to find experienced optical technicians able to do this.
There are some.
Sony are proud of their new automatic machines that can aspherise fairly large optics to very high standards.
I don't know if this would be good enough for spotting scopes.
Are astro scope mirrors and refractors hand finished?
I suspect they must be.
A British master told me that of the 6,000 mirrors he had made only 3 did not need hand finishing.
Maybe automation has become so good that no hand finishing is needed?
What about medium and lower priced scopes?
If hand finished, how many optical workers have the ability to hand finish objectives?
In which countries?
Are young technicians being trained to do this?
In Britain it is very difficult to find experienced optical technicians able to do this.
There are some.
Sony are proud of their new automatic machines that can aspherise fairly large optics to very high standards.
I don't know if this would be good enough for spotting scopes.
Are astro scope mirrors and refractors hand finished?
I suspect they must be.
A British master told me that of the 6,000 mirrors he had made only 3 did not need hand finishing.
Maybe automation has become so good that no hand finishing is needed?