Spot on Wavy. As a manufacturer of expensive gear you are very right.
AOE did it for some time but alas the usual story.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wavytone
The volume here is too small to sustain even one manufacturer properly.
There are a few who, over the years, have hand-made some excellent mirrors (and at least one frequents this forum), or dobs and unusual scopes (eg binocular telescopes) on a small scale.
There are some who have tried over the years to make a production scope, and not lasted long at it.
The only way is to export to other countries, and even then it's quite simply not competitive due to our labour rates (vs asia). When you consider China, with a massive domestic market 100X ours before they even consider exports, the economy of scale thanks to mass production there mean that manufacturing here makes no sense. None at all.
Making a few one off-specials for sale to mates for basically the cost of the materials is totally different to trying to make a living from building a product to be sold in some quantity.
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