Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/10/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]One of the factors that make German products more expensive is ancillary labour costs. Employers in Germany must pay almost 40% on top of the actual wages/salaries in contributions to health insurance, pensions, unemployment insurance etc. The figure for Japan is around 25%. On the subject of glass: Leica now buys in a lot of their special glasses from Asian manufacturers like Hoya (Tokina) and Ohara (who supply glass to just about everyone). Here's their list of customers in Europe: http://www.ohara-gmbh.com/e/kunden/kunden.html AFAIK, grinding and polishing is no longer so much of a cost factor at Leica. For example, the asphericals are now pressed in a special process developed in Solms. What must be a large cost factor at Leica is their quality assurance philosophy - only the tightest tolerances are good enough - this must lead to enormous numbers of rejects, particularly in the case of lens elements. When I last took a factory tour, they came around with a tray piled high with rejects for us to take home as souvenirs. Douglas Frank Filippone wrote: > Makes no difference to the cost of the blanks. A chunk of glass of type > ABC > is the same, regardless of the grinding yet to be done on it. Yes, the > cost > of making those blanks into a finished lens element may/could/probably is > different. > > Frank Filippone > red735i at earthlink.net > > > > I'm talking about when a camera company designs a lens it has different > glasses in it and it gets designed differently depending on which glass is > specified for each element. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > >