Kasai 18mm Orthoscopic

[alan potts]

I got my Kasai 18mm ortho today with my new SW 180mm Mac. Never mind the scope. Guess what on the eyepiece, the box colour and texture, the inner packing and the plastic bag are all exactly the the same as a BGO. I wonder if the are exactly the sam eyepiece. Maybe we will never know.

Alan.

[nightfisher]

if not the same, then as good as would be my guess, Alan the 18mm in the 180 mak is a perfect match, i use that combo a lot (when i get to use the mak)

[John]

When I was doing my comparison review I felt that the Astro Hutech / Kasai orthos could have come from the same factory and even the same machining units as the Baader GO's. The lens coatings and lens diameters look identical as well.

Perhaps someone has salvaged the plant that used to make the GO's and got it back into production again ?

[Astro_Baby]

Far eastern manufacturing often invloves lots of outsource....typically something like an eyepiece will have the boxes supplied by one place, the plastic bags from another, the barrel from yet another and the lenses from yet another.

Thats why the Tsunami was so damaging, it went right through the area where the optical sub contractors were.

I used to deal with an electronics company in Taiwan, every sngle box looked identical but the manufacturers changed from batch to batch, this week its company A supplying PSU, next week its company B, they always looked the same externally, and even internally at times but were all assembled piecework.

About 10 years ago I dealt with mainland china for fashion items, same deal, one handbag, 15 different sub contractors making stuff for it, stude, rings, plastic, felt, zips etc etc.

If it were identical I would have to wonder why Baader disnt simply carry on with it. My bet is one or more of the original xubbies has folded and thats why you get different barrels, different focus point etc but same boxes. None of that would surprise me in far eastern manufacturing.