8" Focal Length Lens

[Dan Hintz]

Spiegelau must make good glasses. The owner of the wine bar I engrave wine glasses for, which are Spiegelau, told me he and his partners searched for months for the perfect wine glass before they opened shop. He went into great detail about how the shape, size, thickness and other factors affected the taste of wine. It all went over my head -It's interesting to know they make a perfect beer glass too!

Every cruise we go on the sommelier drones on and on about similar things. In the end, giving the wine/beer the proper amount of aeration is all that's required, and the wide range of shapes/sizes could easily be chopped down to a small handful... but people like to feel (appear to others as?) sophisticated. I have champagne flutes, some highballs, some wine glasses, and some beer tumblers... that pretty much rounds out the majority of drink types.

[David Somers]

Darren,

Kev Williams had a number of posts a ways back where he discussed his lens tubes that he uses on his Triumph. I dug and found it if it helps you. http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...highlight=tube

Not sure how expensive an 8in lens would be for you so I dont know which is the better test for you.

My thoughts on speeding up handling on an extended tube setup would depend on how consistent the Spiegelau glasses are in terms of depth from the rim to the bottom.

If I can get some time I will try to draw up some thoughts I have on jigs that could speed up the handling of the glasses so that doing single glasses would not be too arduous. No guarantees though. We have company coming later today and have a ton to do before.

Fun project!

Dan.....I dont know about the beer glasses, but I have found the wine glasses certainly made a difference in taste. I was reallllllllly skeptical at first. Then one day a friend had me come over and without explaining what he was doing he blindfolded me and had me taste various wines and then describe how I liked them. I enjoy wine but am not educated about it at all and dont really care to spend the kind of time needed to become educated on it so my descriptions were pretty basic. When we were done it turned out that we had sampled 1 red wine and 1 white. Each one was sampled in 4 different glasses, one of each set of 4 was a Riedel, a competitor of Spiegelau. I thought I was sampling 4 different red wines and 4 different whites. And in each set I strongly favored the Riedel glass over the other 3 glasses. I was pretty stunned. I might add the wines he did this with were basically 2 buck chuck's from Trader Joe's. I was pretty amazed. Not enough that I was willing to pay that kind of money for a wine glass of course, at least not with my breakage record at home. But I was impressed with the perceived differences I experienced. I have no clue if the differences in beer glasses are the same, but I am more willing to be open about the idea after the 2 buck chuck test.

For whatever that is worth! <grin>

Dave

[Ross Moshinsky]

My experience with glass/crystal is if the laser is out of focus, chipping starts occurring. So I can't imagine anything but a huge amount of chipping using a 8" focal length.

[Scott Shepherd]

I think they do those with Galvo lasers. You get a really long focal length with those....

[Dave Sheldrake]

Every cruise we go on the sommelier drones on and on about similar things. In the end, giving the wine/beer the proper amount of aeration is all that's required, and the wide range of shapes/sizes could easily be chopped down to a small handful... but people like to feel (appear to others as?) sophisticated. I have champagne flutes, some highballs, some wine glasses, and some beer tumblers... that pretty much rounds out the majority of drink types.

hehehehehe I live in what was a restaurant...they left all the wine and glasses here when I got the place

funny part is I don't drink

[Dave Sheldrake]

I think they do those with Galvo lasers. You get a really long focal length with those....

long focal length Galvo for the win

[David Somers]

A long focal length Galvo? That can be too awfully expensive huh Dave? Think that will be the next crowdfunded effort from GF? <grin>

[Dave Sheldrake]

They all have pretty long focal lengths Dave compared to normal gantry machines

[Scott Shepherd]

Chinese Galvos are cheap. I saw a fiber galvo recently, 30W (which is a lot for fiber) for $6,500. I would imagine CO2 galvo's would be less. The focal length on those things is about a foot or more.

[David Somers]

Thanks Dave and Scott! I assumed those puppies were quite expensive for some reason! Good to know they are not bad in price. I am no where near needing one, but who knows! Thanks!!!! <grin>

Dave

[Kev Williams]

taste sampling-- Not to throw water on your taste test Dave (I do believe the taste of wines can be altered) but I remember the very first time I ever watched Penn & Teller's Bull****, they were doing taste tests with patrons of a new restaurant, and they were testing "new brands" of bottled water. Each table of patrons that tested was brought a different bottle of water that was poured into a glass, along with an explanation of the water's "history". Without fail, every person found a difference in every water...

And every bottle will filled with a water hose out back behind the restaurant...

[David Somers]

Kev,

He he he! Notice I have never bought the glasses? It was amazing though. My friend was suggesting he was testing anything. Just having me try different wines to see what I liked better. No description, just pour..."see how you like this one Dave!" sip sip. Repeat. It was interesting. And it was more of a "which wine do you like better" kind of thing rather than me trying to describe a wine. So it was pretty simple.

[Darren Wilson]

Lots of great suggestions, thanks everyone for the input. I'll play around with focus on my 4" lens to try and get a spot comparable to 8" (.0175") to see what type of mark I can make and post results. Does look like the easy answer is a Galvo though!
To get the lenses made will incur a tooling fee of $1K plus I have to purchase 40 units @ $110USD, works out to $135USD each, so on my own don't think this will happen.
Cheers,
Daz

[Scott Shepherd]

Try it with the 4" on a shot glass or highball glass. Then you'll prove the concept.

[Darren Wilson]

Try it with the 4" on a shot glass or highball glass. Then you'll prove the concept.

You read my mind Scott

I Just picked up 72 of them to play around with.