Students of the Leica Academy were involved in the testing. The body then gets a very special form, characterized by so-called free form panels, as molded by a relentless and passionate designer who only stops after the ideal form has been found. The coverpanels are composed of two parts. The injection molded metal base and a poly-utherane cover that is injected onto the base, not glued. The chrome strip.
Subtle detail is the chrome strip.
This is the task of the chrome strip. This simple component is a nightmare for the production technicians as they must ensure a very accurate matching of all parts to necessary tolerances. The 1200 parts have all been designed from scratch, using the now wellknown technique of Finite Elements Analysis , a computer model for stress analysis. 80 Engineers worked for 6 years at these tasks. The additional advantage of stress analysis and form analysis is noise reduction.