Drilling glass NO problem........................
Quote:
Originally Posted by ricko
I have here in my hand, a gold three-piece frame with glass lenses circa 1940. The frames are beautiful and the lenses are scratch free.
What you have in your hands is a gold filled piece of rimless frame. The lenses probably are regular crown glass containing 4 holes drilled with a diamond drill. Ther are no more gold filled frames on the market, they are now gold colored, anodized and so forth.
There is totally no problem doing lenses for such a frame, I personally did hundreds of them in my time.
It could still be done with a good carbide drill and some terpentine, a lot of time and patience.
However what was standard then in no more standard today. The old diamond drills ended up in the garbage or in some museum. Today;s opticians have never learned to drill glass by hand and most of them buy those fully automatic lens drilling machines to do the job.
However your problem is a bit more complex. In the USA you have to temper the glass which is not very compatible with drilled holes and the tension when mounted in the frame. The lenses also have to be thicker. The opticians can not do it anymore because they never trained for it. The wholesale labs, if they couild do it, dont weant to do it because they are geared for mass production.
You could get what you want in Europe without much problem, but it will be expensive, but you could also get it in India, China and other far eastern countries were glass lenses are still used to 80% and everybody is still eqiped to do them ion all styles and shapes.
I hope I have adressed your problem in non agressive and insulting way. Times have changed, so has technology and also often service. The optical industry is being gobbled up the large optical corporations and in a few years optical store will become order and delivery outlets for 3-5 companies that will control the professions world wide.
20 years ago I used to go the local cop station and asked them to check my house once in while as I was going on a 3 week holiday, and they checked it daily. Could you still do such thing ? Times are changing and so is technology.
Trivex will fit your needs
ricko, I am surprised that nobody has reccomended Trivex to you. It has a much higher abbe(clearer vision) than Poly and has a very high tensile strength.
It is the best option for drill mounts without a doubt!!