Modifying Stock Optics Tip #5: Make Multiple Modifications At Once

And now Tip #5, that brings everything together. Tip #5 is “Combine Processes”. That means let’s take Tips #1-4 which already give us quite a few options and let’s start overlapping them and intertwining them and we’ll just multiply the possibilities. So, for instance, I have an example here. Let’s say the customer wants a custom size filter, but they also want it serialized because it’s going to go in a certain order in their system and they want to make sure they get the positions correct. How would we do that? Well, the filter that’s needed is mounted in an aluminum ring. So first we would use core drilling as I mentioned earlier to remove that outer ring. Once we have the bare piece of glass, we could then reduce the diameter using diameter reduction to the desired size for the customer. And then finally, we actually can use a laser engraver to etch maybe along the edge of the lens or even on the edge of the surface maybe a serial number or some kind of lettering that indicates where it belongs in the assembly.