Will nods ever become more affordable?

(not talking about digital shit)

  1. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    how much were red dots in 1990?

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      Red dots are based on a technology that wasn't that hard to make cheaper.
      Analog NODs are based on intensifier tubes which are a bitch to manufacture. It's just easier to improve performance of digital sensors than expanding photocathode and microchannel plate manufacturing.

  2. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Analog? No. How they are made is inherently expensive and because a majority of their income comes from military contracts they have an incentive to try and sell NVG devices for as much money as they can to make off those government sales. Digital is potentially the future of affordable night vision, and by 2050 I predict digital NVG better than gen 3 will be readily available under 1000$ because of improvements in processors and AI manufacturing.

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      I wonder if you'd be able to fab a microchannel plate at home one day. Based on https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016JA022580:
      >Pore diameters can be as small as 2µm, or as large as 150µm or more.
      And the Elegoo Saturn 2 8k resin 3d printer supposedly has an XY axis resolution of 28.5 microns, which is well within the range of pore sizes for microchannel plates. I'm not sure if it'd work well but it seems that you could potentially 3d print a microchannel plate out of resin. But making the photosensitive coating seems like the harder step.

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        I don't know much about 3D printing but how much does the resin move/settle/expand/whatever after it is laid down? Or is that taken into account in the resolution figure?

        • 1 month ago
          Anonymous

          I'm actually not sure, as far as I know it should be fixed in place at each layer. It's a UV light that hardens the resin. I think it still needs time to fully cure but it should be pretty accurate.

        • 1 month ago
          Anonymous

          judging from the curing failures in /3dpg/ I'd say it's pretty hard to do right and even harder to do with thicker material.agms2

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      >ai ai ai
      you midwits are retarded.

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        >you dumb people are stupid!

  3. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    You can get gen3 nods for way under $2,000
    If you can't save up that much in a reasonable time frame, you're in a lot of trouble regardless of anything else.

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      He's probably referring to off the shelf binos not DIY assemblies.

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        I'm not talking about DIY assemblies, I'm talking about good deals for gen 3 monos.
        If you're so poor that NODs seem impossible to afford, you have no business looking for binos anyway.

        • 1 month ago
          Anonymous

          Good deals for gen 3 monos are homebuilds you drooling retard

  4. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Give it half a decade before the chinks can start making it in their garage. They did it in the audiophile world, car industry and now they're already at the gates of reality that technology gap for NODs.

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      implying there isn't a worldwide conspiracy to keep thermal/NV prohibitively expensive for the average peasant

  5. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Just buy old euro gen 2 stuff

  6. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Ignoring surp tubes, probably not. Bear in mind IIRC there's only 3 companies that can make image intensfier tubes in America; L3 Harris, Elbit, and Photonis. The actual production of said tubes are incredibly intensive and tons of tubes get thrown out for not passing QC. Your only chance at cheap NV for everyone is digital units, analog is just too expensive of a process inherently to reasonably made cheap

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      >and tons of tubes get thrown out for not passing QC.
      How is that even possible, considering how long they've been making tubes for, they still have such a high "failure" rate?
      Why not sell the ones with minor dark spots at a cheaper price?

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        Extremely high QC and shitty processes.

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        >How is that even possible, considering how long they've been making tubes for, they still have such a high "failure" rate?
        Why don't CPU and GPU manufacturers get perfect silicon every time and have to sell some as lower grade chips and throw some out outright?

        >Why not sell the ones with minor dark spots at a cheaper price?
        That's exactly what they do. They even sell ones with major blems, and people buy them.

        • 1 month ago
          Anonymous

          >Why don't CPU and GPU manufacturers get perfect silicon every time and have to sell some as lower grade chips and throw some out outright?
          Because they move to new process nodes. Yield on older process nodes continues to improve until defect rate approaches a limit near zero or production stops. The yield for Intel 14nm++++++++ is >95%, while the yield for TSMC, Samsung and Intel leading edge 3nm is supposedly between 5 and 70%.

        • 1 month ago
          Anonymous

          https://i.imgur.com/QyeNbWr.png

          >Why don't CPU and GPU manufacturers get perfect silicon every time and have to sell some as lower grade chips and throw some out outright?
          Because they move to new process nodes. Yield on older process nodes continues to improve until defect rate approaches a limit near zero or production stops. The yield for Intel 14nm++++++++ is >95%, while the yield for TSMC, Samsung and Intel leading edge 3nm is supposedly between 5 and 70%.

          The difference between chips and tubes being that tubes are a government protected monopoly but chips aren't - the government happily spends taxes on inflated tube prices (cost+profit structure normally) in return for the rest of the world having worse night fighting equipment. No formation of a consumer market, real innovation or real competition is possible, so the technology advances at a snail's pace, the sector remains enormously unproductive and prices stay sky high.

          If tubes advanced at a tenth the rate of chips then you'd be able to buy tubes that could let you discern objects thousands of times apparently dimmer than the Hubble can for the price of dinner at McDonalds. But make more excuses for the protected shops.

  7. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Sure Anon! just gotta wait for the free market to create a more economically viable option for it. My high-school econ teacher told me that the free market will create the cheapest and most efficient technology known to man.

  8. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    3k is not that much, car guys spend that much on their cars every month.

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      Cars is an expensive hobby though

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        So's being a speshul fartses cargo cultist.
        Just do a cheap weapon mounted thermal like Cletus and move on tbqh

  9. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Uhh idk

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