[ATM] Optical Grade Glass

["Peter" <peter@kitgear.com>]

Hi,

To all those ATMers working with transmissive optics. An FYI email to keep
you on your tiptoes...

I work in the projection industry and I thought you might want to know what
we will be facing shortly. Over the next year Asian manufacturers are
preparing to start producing 10 million RTVs (rear projection TVs) per year
to satisfy our insatiable need for home theatres. Most of these products
will be flat panel devices requiring glass for their prism assemblies,
projection lenses and optical windows. This will create a shortage of
high-end glass such as BK7, Schott, Hoya, etc... The net effect will be
longer lead times, price increases and quality problems.

In the mean time China is attempting to scale up production to try to meet
this demand but to make things worse our experience with Chinese glass has
not been good. Pollution in the vicinity of those plants is so bad that the
glass is contaminated to the point that simply looking through it you'll see
yellow glass not clear which indicates absorption of blue. We were also
shocked to also learn that Hoya BK7 is no longer made in Japan. These types
of problems may also end up affecting refractor optics and eyepieces.

I'm not sure to what extent this shift will affect the ATM community but for
certain it will be interesting!

Best,


Peter


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