Aimpoint AB

Aimpoint AB
Private
Industry Manufacturing
Founded 1974
Headquarters Malmö, Sweden
Products Electro-optical sights and accessories
Website http://www.aimpoint.com

Aimpoint AB is a Swedish optics company manufacturing red dot sights for civilian, police and military use. The most popular model is the CompM2, currently used by numerous armed forces around the world.

Company

The Aimpoint AB[1] is a manufacturing company founded in 1974 and is based in Malmö, Sweden.[2] Their primary products are reflector (or reflex) sights, specifically the red dot sight sub-type. In 1975 they introduced their first commercial product,[3] the "Aimpoint Electronic" red dot sight, based on a design by Helsingborg engineer John Arne Ingemund Ekstrand.[4] This is claimed to be the first light-emitting diode "red dot" reflector sight ever manufactured. They currently offer many product lines based on this technology as well as accessories. In 1997 Aimpoint was awarded the first multi-year military contract ever for a red dot sighting system when the US Army purchased their Aimpoint CompM2, designated the “M68 Close Combat Optic”.[5]

Products

Aimpoint on a AK4
Ak 5D seen here with an Aimpoint red dot sight.

Aimpoint currently sells a large line of red dot sights marketed to hunters, marksmen, law-enforcement agencies, and military organizations all over the world.[6] More than 500,000 Aimpoint sights are in military service today.

All of their products use non-magnifying optical collimators (reflector or "reflex" sights) along with battery powered light-emitting diodes to produce a red aiming point. Some models come in sub-types with lenses added to give them a low magnification. Many sights utilize a type of mangin mirror system, consisting of a meniscus lens corrector element combined with the semi-reflective mirror (what Aimpoint's advertising calls a "two lens" or "double lens" system[7]), that compensates for off axis spherical aberration, an error that can cause the dot position to diverge off the sight's optical axis with change in eye position.[8][9][10] Some sights also offer some correction for parallax via having the aiming dot focused at a distance of 50 yards. Aimpoint markets their sights as "parallax free",[11] but this seems to refer to their off-axis spherical aberration correction system. Aimpoints, like all other collimated sight systems, induce some parallax at different ranges due to the nature of the collimator.[12][13]

Current Aimpoint models

CET models

These models use Aimpoints "Circuit Efficiency Technology" (CET) diode circuitry, a low power consumption system:

ACET models


These models use Aimpoints "Advanced Circuit Efficiency Technology" (ACET) diode circuitry, a newer low power consumption system introduced in 2005:

Accessories

A U.S. Army soldier with an M4 carbine equipped with an Aimpoint CompM2

Featured behind an eotech.[14]

Discontinued Aimpoint models

See also

References

  1. "AB" is a standard Swedish abbreviation for "Aktiebolag", meaning "joint-stock company"
  2. businessweek.com, Bloomberg Business Exchange, Electronic Equipment, Instruments and Components, Aimpoint AB
  3. Aimpoint, History
  4. Invention intelligence: Volume 11, Inventions Promotion Board, National Research Development Corporation of India - 1976, page 12
  5. Paul Milenkowic, Stan S. Sudol, USE OF MULTIYEAR CONTRACT SAVES $1.36M
  6. List includes: US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, US Marine Corps, USSOCOM units, the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, French Army, Swedish Army, Danish Army, Finnish Army, Norwegian Army, Latvian Army, Slovenian Army, and Italian Army
  7. BATTLESPACE Exhibition News, SHOT SHOW OPENS WITH A BANG! by Julian Nettlefold
  8. Note: a setup Aimpoint calls "parallax free"
  9. ar15.com, How Aimpoints, EOTechs, And Other Parallax-Free Optics Work
  10. Gunsight - Patent 5901452 - general description of a mangin mirror system
  11. Aimpoint's parallax-free, double lens system... AFMO.com
  12. John Dreyer, Facts and Figures About Dot Sights, Encyclopedia of Bullseye Pistol
  13. American rifleman: Volume 93, National Rifle Association of America - THE REFLECTOR SIGHT By JOHN B. BUTLER, page 31
  14. Systema M4A1 PTW
  15. Equipment | NavySEALs.com - Experience the SEAL Edge

External links

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