New boroscopes, yay or nay

[Deez]

Title says it all, are these new design they have, going to off the protection i need, when working boro clear, and color. Or should i go with the 286 3/5 splits.

[Mike_Aurelius]

At the risk of starting another flame war on the subject, I called Schott about a week or so ago on this very subject. On another forum, I was asked my opinion, and this is what I wrote:


Funny you should ask that.... I just got off the phone with one of the Sales Engineers at Schott. Here's what he had to say:

On the last day of the ACE melt a month or so ago, the engineers in Germany added the constituent materials for green welding to the ACE batch as a test run. The glass was mixed and run through the continuous furnace for one day. Normally, when Schott makes welding filter, the glass cooks for 5-6 days before being pressed or poured. In this case with the ACE, it was mixed and pressed the same day. It was then graded according to shade number.

According to the sales engineer, it was a test only. Phillips did purchase the entire days production, which he estimated at approximately 3-4 hundred pounds.

Here's the problem -- Schott has no plans to make any more of this glass at present, so when Phillips runs out, it's gone and it may be some time before it is replaced.

Additionally, because the glass did not "cook" long enough in the melter the quality of the glass itself may be suspect, full of cord, striae, seeds, etc. Presumably, Phillips will be increasing their inspection of the glass once it is processed to sort out the good from the bad glass.

I've seen the charts on Kristian's website, those were prepared by Schott on the glass at the factory -- but here's the thing - is Phillips making the glass to the exact same thickness as the glass the charts were prepared with? A difference of even a half of a millimeter can make a huge difference in the transmission chart.

I'll say this: on the surface, the glass "looks" good on the transmission charts. I discussed with the Sales Engineer being put on the call list if they decide to make any more in the future, but if they do, I want the glass to be made properly - cooked for 5-6 days as needed to get clean glass.

Anyway, part of that is direct from the Sales Engineer at Schott, the rest is my opinion for what it's worth.





Well, according to the transmission charts, the product looks good from a spectral standpoint. I've not seen any lenses (yet), so I can't really comment on that -- however, I have seen what improperly (let's use the word) "matured" glass looks like --

it can be streaky, it can have bubbles, seeds (unmelted raw materials), cord (lines in the glass that look like rope, essentially unmixed glass), straie (lines in the glass that look like hair) etc.

The ACE glass itself, when they start a batch, is always melted with cullet to start the batch, then additional raw materials are added. The batch is cooked for about 5-6 days before melting begins. Since it is a continuous melt process, new raw materials are added to the batch tank all the time, and mixed with the old.....the chief problem with not "cooking" the green in, is that the raw materials don't get a chance to totally saturate the glass, that's where you get the streaky color from, additionally, one of the chief materials for green welding is iron, and that takes a very long time to melt in and molecularly join with the glass.

Test runs, in my opinion, are fine for small batches to test a new product, but definately not for production purposes. If this stuff works for Phillips, more power to them. But I'll have to see it to believe it. My opinion once again.