In the last few years there have been a lot of companies pumping out micro red dots. There were a few companies dominating the market and now it seems there is a new company every month. Many of them are small companies selling optics manufactured in China or rebranding optic designs from overseas companies and selling them with a few changes or aesthetic differences. While we always recommend supporting American companies and American manufacturing we understand that optics get expensive fast, so we understand a lot of our customers are looking to these more affordable optic solutions.
The primary issue with these smaller company optics is generally their use of common "footprints" confusing customers about the true compatibility of the optic. Not all "footprints" are equal. Some optics may only use the screw pattern or post pattern and call it by the common footprint name. The Delta Point Pro footprint has become very popular over the last year or two and there are a lot more options for that footprint, however, there are issues when it comes to custom milling a slide.
At JagerWerks we've always made our optic cuts to fit the specific optic that we use in the nomenclature. This means our DPP cut is designed to have a tight tolerance to the Leupold Delta Point Pro. This creates issues for optics that are loosely using the footprint dimensions or just using the screw pattern. The housing on these optics can have geometry that will not allow it to work on our optic cut or MOS+ plate. There are some that we have confirmed work with our cuts. Here is a list of confirmed DPP footprint optics that work with our cuts and plates:
-Leupold Delta Point Pro (Obviously)
-Eotech EFLX
-Vortex Defender ST/XL
-US Optics Rise
The original DPP cut we made was designed around using Leupold's accessory rear sight that is designed to fit into the Delta Point Pro optic, but with the rise in popularity we now offer a simplified cut that does not support that built in rear sight as a race cut and a front of optic iron sight dovetail. The footprint cannot remain as deep as we would like to cut and stay in front of an factory iron sight dovetail location, so we do not cut it in front of the factory iron sight dovetail.
One of the major products that is not compatible with the existing Leupold Delta Point Pro cut is Sig Sauers new Romeo X Pro. Currently we only have a specific cut for this available for the Sig P320, but if you desire this cut for one of our other DPP compatible models that we support, email us at info@jagerwerks.com.
The Vortex Defender ST and XL however have been falling into favor for good reason. They are built well, have Vortex's tremendous warranty and are built great with a great price.
Our Race Cut utilizing the rear notch built into the Vortex Defender ST is great if you want a simple setup and aren't super concerned about back up iron sights. The front of iron optic is super clean if you do require some backup irons, however we have not tested all iron sights with the Defender series and they do protrude in front of the optic cut so your irons may vary in compatibility.
That's it for now, if you have any other questions related to optic compatibility or footprints email us or reach out on Instagram!