As you know, getting the new scopes designed and manufactured has been a hellish process. (Now hitting four years and five months!) I’ve run out of patience and ability to keep trying and waiting with the sourcing company I have been working with (yes, it has taken me WAY too long; I should’ve pulled the plug about 2 years ago!). I’ve tried many times to find a company that was willing to take on this project (custom size and shape microscopes and with such a fine reticle — so, not your average OTS item!) and failing. (Got LOTS of replies: “yeah-sure, we’ll be HAPPY to make you scopes…. Oh, well, no, not CUSTOM scopes!” {sigh})

By amazing coincidence, my main machinist (whom I call “the Blessed Harry,” because he has “saved” me multiple times) has a customer who has a customer — who turns out to be an industrial designer with ten-plus years working in medical microscopes!! I’ve met with him twice in the past three weeks; he has prepared a good proposal which I have accepted; and has prepared preliminary drawings and is working on finals. After much discussion about possible sourcing (options and possible problems) and minor design changes (that might be needed or possible) without interfering with the required backward compatibility, he has started on the first prototype; we’re just waiting on delivery of a specific lens kit.

In the meantime, he has done a drawing of the proposed custom reticle. (Of course, we need a custom reticle too; and since it has to be custom; I’ve decided to make it really custom — instead of going back to having two ‘styles’ of Tooke Gage (an ‘English-unit’ version and a metric-unit version), let’s have both scales on one reticle. Et voila:

(Oh! And the new guy will also be helping me with the camera adapter; the next big project once we get the scopes into production! Whoo hoo!)