......and it would give you something to do other than complain about improved products that you are not going to ever sell!
Everyone can make their own opinions, but Cherry Optical lives ours. It is extremely important to have coatings that perform, especially when promoting and processing Free-Form technology. If the coating fails, the whole lens fails. If the coating is too hard to process in-house (slipping, twisting, whatever) it is too risky to promote and manufacturer.
IMHO it's all about coatings that are easier to process and will not fail. All the Crizal products, HiVision products, and Kodak CleAR (directly from Signetek) outperform all other coatings. You are allowed to believe what you want (and we all know you do) but ONCE AGAIN I will offer you the opportunity to come and see first hand the importance of high performance coatings. Additionally, how the coatings are applied. If I tried to put AR on lenses at my lab it would be laughable compared to how Essilor, HOYA, Signet Armorlite, and even Zeiss apply there coatings at their labs. I liken the difference similiar how a Ford Escort is slapped together on an assembly line compared to how a Mercedes is put together. The process makes all the difference.
If we were selling and processing low dollar, low profit no-name PALs and commodity items made up the majority of our work I could see the need for a low price, 'no frills' AR coating. But when we are selling lenses that have a wholesale price higher than Harry's retail price we need a coating that we can rely on.
How about this for a test: We've tried about a dozen different coatings over the years and have been burned by the vast majority. What does burned mean, you ask? It means the coatings failed and needed to be returned. That meant money in the trash can for either us or the coating facility, neither of which is good for the overal market. No more burning burning money - only making high quality lenses here.
Different strokes for different folks, right?
Adam
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