Originally posted by clackers I think Ricoh refer to that in the K-1 Special Site interview with their lens designers:
"The development of the new D FA-series lenses also meant new challenges in the mechanical design and mass production processes. Some types of glass material are harder to process than others; thinner lenses require higher precision in the polishing and assembly processes. In fact, some of the new D FA-series lenses couldn’t be produced by the existing mass-production system.
One of the designers in charge of developing the lens barrel and inner mechanisms gives the example of one large-aperture telephoto zoom lens. “When I created a test sample that was true to the original design plan, it produced a peculiar flare and couldn’t deliver the resolution we wanted,” he says. “When I looked into the causes, it turned out that the spherical precision of the large-aperture, special-glass lens was slightly off. The error was beyond the level detectable by measuring instruments, so it was impossible for us to anticipate this in advance.”
Under normal circumstances, there was the possibility that the optical design could be redone from the initial design stage. However, the PENTAX optical design team carefully examined the entire production system to find out how, at what point and by what standards they should measure the lens to attain the desired level of precision, and achieve the intended optical performance. Collaborating with the production staff, they reworked the entire assembly line to solve the problem. Because of this experience, the optical design team reviewed the entire development process and implemented a new system. In this system, test models using special glass materials would be polished and assembled from the earliest stages exactly as actual lenses would be mass-produced at the factory.
This was something of an extreme case, but the optical design team also adopted a more elaborate quality-control system for all other D FA-series lenses than the previous one. In the end, the new D FA series even helped advance the company’s development and mass-production processes. "
Originally posted by monochrome The issues with the tooling and assembly precision just shows how capital starved Pentax was when Ricoh acquired it. We complain they aren't producing new lenses quickly enough, then they reveal that in order to produce the lens they had to minutely examine their entire production process and (likely) make significant capital investment in new machines.
From the outside it looks like they aren't doing much, while we find internally they're furiously upgrading their tools and QA.
The provided info clackers shared proves my point -- RI wasn't playing marketing games with the release date. They found issues with the design very late in the process and resolved it before final product launch. Further, it looks like they took what they learned and enhanced their process. They should be commended for that.
It also seems to answer another question I had of if they are taking what they learn from each lens and building off of it. I think they will get quicker with lens releases.