Opinion: A Material Delay – A Likely Reason for Camera Delays and Production Issues

#61
AUGS said:
Retooling for alternate material(s) is one step. All materials shrink in the mould when changing state from liquid to solid. And every material shrinks slightly different, so existing tools and processes (as highlighted earlier in the aluminium/magnesium comparison table) may not be re-usable, so the lead time needs to be considered.
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I would agree that virtually all metals that are cast/moulded shrink but there are classic exceptions especially when you say "all materials" :)

H2O, cubic zirconium tungstate (ZrW2O) and metals (Si,Ga,Ge,Sb,Bi,Pu), alloys (Wood's metal) and numerous materials (zeolites, quartz, tugstates etc.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_thermal_expansion
 
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#63
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#64
David - Sydney said:
Addressing future supply and current geo-political issues :)
- Magnesium is the eighth most abundant element in Earth's crust (about 2.5 percent) and is, after aluminium and iron, the third most plentiful structural metal.
- Australia has traditionally been one of the world's "dig it and ship it" mineral suppliers but not processing ore into metals.
- With the risk of geo-political supply chain disruption especially for critical minerals for renewable manufacturing, there are projects and funding to do more on-shore processing... especially for green processing using green hydrogen for energy (solar for electrolysis)
- Magnesium (Magnesite) is on the critical minerals list for most countries (not India for some reason).
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without a doubt.

it's never a good idea for any company or country to have a monopoly. We've never seen that work out well regardless of who it was.

I'm trying not to get this into a country debate ;)
 
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#65
I don't see much value to carbon fibre reinforced plastics in the kind of construction that would be used in cameras tbh speaking from someone with a history related to plastic laminates (although not in fabrication though I have some experience there it is limited). The main property where it shines is stiffness to weight ratio and in the likes of tripod legs where that matters maybe secondary benefits of salt water resistance and vibration damping (depending on the resin used). There are materials that are high toughness low strength to match cf high strength low toughness to get a best of both worlds such as HMPP like innegra or HMWPE like spectra and dyneema laminates.

Problem is for cameras the shell would be made very different to the spun tow prepreg like tubing often uses, or hand laminated vacuum bagged where most my experience with the hands on side is. Most carbon constructions suited to making good camera shells would be VERY labour intensive or material cost prohibitive for large volume production cameras leaving stuff like the very short fibre reinforced thermo plastics mix which are not too different to e-glass reinforced nylon and isn't what people think of by CF and would be step backward.

Some high toughness steels as well as some aluminium alloys like 7000 series stuff are plenty good enough for camera shells in that although heavier if you heat treat them optimally you could get them thin enough to be similar to magnesium. Fill in the gaps with some kind of cheap but decent e-plastic like pbt and fibre reinforce it and you'd likely have a camera just as light but cheap and still tough enough to hammer tent pegs in with.
 
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#67
Richard CR said:
The price may have gone down, but it still may be difficult to get consistently. There's a lot of new internal demand for China's magnesium alloy products. EVs, spacecraft/launch, and military applications are far too numerous to mention, not to mention that the camera companies could be still facing production backlogs because they couldn't get it reliably over the past 2 years.

But I'll always welcome new ideas though, what would impact all aspects of Canon's manufacturing and ability to fabricate lenses, battery grips, cameras?

there's very little in common there - and Canon's fabrication is mostly done via automated assembly.
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Even in 2022 which was the most expensive price period the average price was roughly 40'000 CNY/T, converted to USD at 1 CNY = 0.14 USD this is about 5'600 USD / ton or less than 6 USD per kg Magnesium.

In a camera body or a lens less than 1kg of Magnesium is used, so during the most expensive period 2022 less than 6 USD for a camera body or lens.

Even at the maximum prices in 2022 less than 6 USD cost per camera body or lens does not indicate any shortage or supply issue for such high-priced products, and already in 2023 and 2024 prices went down to roughly half of 2022.

I do not understand why Magnesium should be difficult to get, not today and not even during 2022, as the market price is driven by supply and demand - Canon (and anybody else) just pays the price for the amount of tons needed and gets the Magnesium delivered. Note that Canon's demand is small compared to other industries (as you mention), therefore Canon's demand has only a small impact on the supply situation, while the market price at all times remained easily payable by Canon.

To your question what would impact Canon's manufacturing:
I do not know, however the stacked CMOS sensor, rumored for the R5 II and announced for the R1, developed and manufactured by Canon, is completely new, so my bet is that large-volume production with the intended quality can be an issue and could delay deliveries of the R5 II, and may have caused the relatively late announcement of the R1 compared to Sony A1, Nikon Z9.
 
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#68
Richard CR said:
I'm trying not to get this into a country debate ;)
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Unfortunately, that is what it happening though.
All countries are looking for advantage for their own country and the multilateral trade deals/WTO are basically dead in the water compared to bilateral trade deals. Even these fail due to certain blocking issues eg recent EU-Australia deal due to agriculture naming rights/access/subsidies etc.

The use of import tariffs causing higher prices for consumers is just a subsidy for local producers if the additional government revenue is used that way or just goes into consolidated revenue.
That said, there aren't many better tools when perceived dumping is taking place based on subsidised production eg direct funding, tax breaks, potentially slave labour, excess manufacturing capacity and decreasing local demand. The WTO is ineffective and painfully slow.

Strategic bans on technology exports (GPUs etc) or ASML machines to China to slow their technological development. Yet China is still ASML's biggest customer.
China's south sea land grab and tension with Taiwan adds to this.
The loss of TSMC's production in Taiwan would impact global GDP growth. TSMC is 30% of the Taiwan stock market, half the world's foundry revenue and 84% of the world's chip market under 10nm. It is possibly the world's most important company strategically.
https://www.asiafinancial.com/china-risk-sees-taiwans-tsmc-moving-chip-fabs-overseas

All countries are facing/using the same things.
Add a couple of real wars, Iran/North Korea nukes and suddenly things a lot more uncertain than ever.
 
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#69
Martin0815 said:
To your question what would impact Canon's manufacturing:
I do not know, however the stacked CMOS sensor, rumored for the R5 II and announced for the R1, developed and manufactured by Canon, is completely new, so my bet is that large-volume production with the intended quality can be an issue and could delay deliveries of the R5 II, and may have caused the relatively late announcement of the R1 compared to Sony A1, Nikon Z9.
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You make a good point... the key bottleneck could be Canon's own fabs. There hasn't been an announced disaster like an earthquake/tsunami event but there may be poor yield/failures although you would expect rumours to be circulating if that was the case.
=> We could always start a rumour of course :cool:
 
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#70
Canon Rumors Guy said:
They do....

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Manufacturing facilities | Canon Global

Learn more about Canon's global network of functional and well-organized production facilities.
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Custom & Medical Contract Manufacturing Partner | Canon Virginia, Inc.

From concept to market, Canon Virginia, Inc. is uniquely qualified to be your outsourced manufacturing partner in a range of industries, including medical.
cvi.canon.com
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Interesting. Regardless, I don’t think they’d let an unimportant (in so far as others will work just fine in its place) material shortage hinder production that long. They can temporarily outsource even if their strategy is vertical integration.
 
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#72
Martin0815 said:
To your question what would impact Canon's manufacturing:
I do not know, however the stacked CMOS sensor, rumored for the R5 II and announced for the R1, developed and manufactured by Canon, is completely new, so my bet is that large-volume production with the intended quality can be an issue and could delay deliveries of the R5 II, and may have caused the relatively late announcement of the R1 compared to Sony A1, Nikon Z9.
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except that wouldn't impact lens deliveries, cause canon to discontinue grips, and so on.

Also, new sensors aren't a problem for Canon - and those would have been done a while ago. sensors are completed well in advance, and they already did the hard heavy lifting - stacking with the R3. The R1 wouldn't be a large run, and those sensors would have been out the door a long time ago. I think most fabs including canon's are at LEAST in the 100's of wafers per hour for the entire fab, and the R1 would be a very limited run. Canon's fabs used to produce 14 million sensors per year don't forget.

And just to add - just about every single release has been plagued with backorders the day after the announcement we get a "sorry we can't meet demand, too bad, maybe next year"
 
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#73
3kramd5 said:
Interesting. Regardless, I don’t think they’d let an unimportant (in so far as others will work just fine in its place) material shortage hinder production that long. They can temporarily outsource even if their strategy is vertical integration.
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how can other materials work in it's place, canon would have to go back to the drawing board and redesign the 1/3/5/7 series bodies from the ground up including structural and durability testing. I never talk much about that, but Canon plans down to the most minute details when it comes to the camera bodies.

not to mention canon would then have to flip it's entire 25+ years marketing message surrounding body construction. it would be like canon making L series lenses with engineering plastic mounts. I'd need a year's supply of popcorn if Canon did that..
 
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#74
Richard CR said:
not to mention canon would then have to flip it's entire 25+ years marketing message surrounding body construction. it would be like canon making L series lenses with engineering plastic mounts. I'd need a year's supply of popcorn if Canon did that..
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Canon certainly changed their lens body materials from metal (EF) to engineered plastic (RF) for the larger ones, not to mention greater use of external extension.
Uncle Roger's teardown of the RF70-100/2.8 is pretty impressive
https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/20...ed-teardown-of-the-canon-rf-70-200mm-f2-8-is/

Selected comments from conclusion....
"This lens was a new design from the ground up. There’s no ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it’ holdovers. That’s a lot more work for the designers, but the result is a beautifully engineered, fully modern lens. It’s clean, functional, and straightforward.

It’s obviously very robustly engineered from a mechanical standpoint. The internal composites are strong as hell. There are double cams, rods, and posts everywhere. There’s no play in any moving parts. We can’t imagine there will ever be play in the moving parts unless you run over it with a truck. You could describe it as ruggedized, but I’m going to stick with Strong, Like Bull, and suggest we refer to this as the RF-SLB 70-200mm f/2.8 from now on.

There are some of you who are going to scream about how you want metal lenses. OK, Boomer, go get you a metal lens and show us how strong you are. On every other 70-200mm lenses we’ve disassembled, there are multiple metal parts that we can bend with our fingers. There’s not a damn thing we can bend with our fingers in this bad boy. This is going to hold up better than a metal lens, it’s probably sturdier, and it weighs far less.

I haven’t tested it optically. I haven’t even shot with it. But after looking inside it, I want it. The engineering in here is pure art. And even I, the person who mocks construction at any chance I get, can’t find anything to complain about."
 
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#75
David - Sydney said:
Canon certainly changed their lens body materials from metal (EF) to engineered plastic (RF) for the larger ones, not to mention greater use of external extension.
Uncle Roger's teardown of the RF70-100/2.8 is pretty impressive
https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/20...ed-teardown-of-the-canon-rf-70-200mm-f2-8-is/
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internally yes. however, the external shells and mounts are not engineering plastic like some of the STM lenses for example. Which was the point. As canon moves to lighter lenses, internally they have to move to engineering plastic to reduce weight from even lightweight metals. Canon even on the 1 series has used engineering plastics internally.
 
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#77
3kramd5 said:
Interesting. Regardless, I don’t think they’d let an unimportant (in so far as others will work just fine in its place) material shortage hinder production that long. They can temporarily outsource even if their strategy is vertical integration.
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So theyre going to take 30 years of in-house knowledge of production, materials,and product development and just turn around and get someone else to do it? It doesn't work like that
 
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