I've dealt with designing and fabricating parts out of aluminum for most of my professional life, and in the past 25+ years for aero- and outer space programs and let me tell you, there are aluminum alloys available that can match the strength and come close to the thermal expansion of good steel. What the average consumer has been exposed to are soft and weak, comparatively speaking.
No reason to expect that the camera industry wouldn't have just much interest in making parts of the best aluminum alloys, with properties chosen to do the job. Which is not to say that there aren't some parts from manufacturers who don't care about ultimate strengths and dent resistance and wear properties, but I can assure you, the major manufacturers certainly do. keith whaley Rob Studdert wrote: > > On 7 Jun 2003 at 20:55, Alan Chan wrote: > > > The inner barrels "feel" like those metal stepping rings or the filter > > threads on the front of the lenses. Are they steel? > > > > PS: This is a real question btw. :-) > > In every case I have encountered they have been fabricated using aluminium > alloys. In fact I had to forcibly remove the lens legend facia ring on my > M50/1.4 and it was some of the toughest aluminium alloy that I had ever > encountered. :-( > > Rob Studdert > HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA > Tel +61-2-9554-4110 > UTC(GMT) +10 Hours > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications/ > Pentax user since 1986, PDMLer since 1998
