"There's something quite unutterably sad about this..........
 
This site, and this subject, is arguably human inovation at it's best,...but this reminds me that humanbeings are basically evil and will always be doomed to missuse what they invent and…"

"Given the general abilities displayed on this forum and the complexities of putting these things into the air, I'm amazed that anyone should be using a laser to cut such a poor material as 3mm acrylic to make the parts.    If you have the ability to…"

"........Actually, you don't even need a lathe to do this, you can make a very good tiny lens by working the plastic rod in the chuck of an electric drill.
 
Also, bear in mind the old method of making a microscope objective by melting a strand of…"

"This is an awful lot of work for not very much gain.   The best way to make this is to put an acrylic, or similar. rod in the lathe and turn aspherical end either by eye (not as difficult as you might think,..most decent machinists can do it) or,…"