Originally Posted by
amac
...then all scopes have the same potential for failure - reticle coming loose and cross hair lines shifting.
Yes, but only because that's always been the case with optics. Anything made by man us mutable to begin with, and the little old lady likes to show up to the factory drunk from time to time.
This is true of any internal component; if any lens/prism inside a scope comes loose, there will be actual or apparent shift of the reticle. In the case of an etched reticle, it's etched onto a lens (usually by laser, these days, as there's no lands/grooves/jeweling as with use of an actual machine bit) and therefore the entire reticle moves if what it's etched onto comes loose, instead of, say, seeing a mil-dot hanging like an overripe pomegranate prior to watching it fall out of the FOV.
It's unusual, but there's still some optics out there made with an etched reticle on an independent piece of glass and set in front of a lens, but that's needless parallax, extra airspace, extra possible failure point, etc., so it's not common. The same circumstances apply; lens/glass shifts = apparent/actual shift of the reticle. This is the Luddite approach to an etched reticle, in comparative terms, as etching onto actual lenses isn't all that complex in the modern manufacturing sense.
Contractor scum, PM Infantry Weapons
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