The Aizu factory has been built up and developped continously; a new hall where magnesium alloy parts are processed, was opened less than two years ago and it is the best proof. We started our tour in that hall exactly.
In the hall you can find more than a dozen of machines which finish magnesium alloy moulds delivered by an external supplier. During the processing some surfaces of the moulds are polished, cut, drilled, and everything is levelled off with the highest precision demanded by the production of optical instruments.
In the hall there are just several employees responsible for starting and positioning the machines. Next to every machine there is a working station where an employee is able to control the quality of processed parts; below you can see pictures of moulds before and after processing.
The next production hall we were led to was much bigger, housing about 150 machines which process brass and aluminum parts. In that hall are created different mounts, rings and casings used in most of lenses. The processing is more thorough than in the case of magnesium alloy moulds because the parts are created from solid cylinders or barrels.
Even if the whole hall looks more like a locksmith workshop there are a lot of precise measurment tools around. All parts are checked on an ongoing basis; callibrating machines for new working programs needs very precise measurements of first benchmark parts in order to check whether they fit the standards.
Below you see a lot of L-mounts which production is going full-swing.
In the hall are produced both the biggest lens parts like e.g. tubes for the huge 200-500 mm f/2.8 EX DG lens and the smallest ones, like special nuts, screws, and pins.
