There are a number of anti-reflective coatings on the market today; whose brand do you dispense most often? If your favorite brand isn't on the list don't be afraid to post it below so we can all get an idea of what's out there.
Crizal
UTMC
Pentax Surpass
Zeiss ET
Zeiss Gold ET
Reflection Free
Nikon Performance
Hoya Hi Vision
Optima AR
Seiko High Impact AR
Wholesale Lab's House Brand
Other (Please Post In Thread Below)
What brand of ARC do you use most?
There are a number of anti-reflective coatings on the market today; whose brand do you dispense most often? If your favorite brand isn't on the list don't be afraid to post it below so we can all get an idea of what's out there.
Zeiss Cool Blue Mirror is wonderful for sunglasses.
I've found Zeiss to provide a good product at a good value. This enables us to price it within affordability of most consumers which is now about 80% of lens sales. Their 2yr warranty enables us to sell it with a value added feature. The only legitimate complaint I get is folks can't keep them clean.
Kevin
When I worked at Lenscrafters almost all of the coating was done by Reflection Free. The quality was inconsistent at best. The St. Petersburg lab was running 50-60% remakes at one point and taking sometimes 3-4 weeks on turn-around. I had a bit better results with the Sunvalley lab, however I still remember one job where we went through six sets before I was comfortable dispensing. I ended up doing close to 200 miles of driving in an effort to (3 round trips) finally get the job out.
I did like the UTMC's that I worked with, never had any problems with them scratching.
Kevin, I believe that Zeiss warrantys their regular AR for one(1) year; they recently introduced a Tuff AR that they warranty for two(2) years, but they charge as much for it as Crizal. So, be sure you're ordering the one you want. Best wishes, Al.
Quoting from the Zeiss policy book, "AR coatings...are fully guaranteed against defects in material and workmanship. This includes chiping, cracking, crazing or wearing under normal use and care during THE LIFE OF THE PRESCRIPTION (caps mine)." That's for the standard ET or Gold, not the Foundation product.
Many independent labs also utilize the Zeiss equipment and may offer a different guanarty; possible that is the basis for the discrepancy. We have Zeiss and guarantee for life.
Jim,
Do Walman Labs offer an in-house AR? If they do, what percenatage of your customers appear to order it as their base AR lens? In my experience, in-house ARC's have improved greatly over the years. Sometimes it is a matter of trial and error but we have found a few that perform very well and we use as a standard AR lens. Of course, like everyone else here I still have my favorites - Zeiss and Seiko High Impact AR .
Note - I edited the poll to add Seiko High Impact to the list.
My favourite coating to work with, by far, is Crizal. I could be wrong, but I thought I remember the CRIZAL coating having a two year guarentee against defects, e.g. coating crazing. In any case, I have put ALL my friends and family members in it, as well as myself. Pentax's DiamondClear coat is really great to work with, too. We stock that. :)
Hi Jo. We have Zeiss in-house but always give the customer what they request. Last month, our breakout was: Zeiss - 43.6%; Crizal - 32.3%; I-Coat - 10.3%; Pentax - 6.3%; 7 other brands accounted for the remaining 6.5%. AR has come a LONG way in the last couple years; most the products are quite good today.
Jim G:
You don't have to go into vendor details if you don't want to but what would you say as a whole your scratch remake percent was? I would think with so many opticals selling scratch coated AR's that this would be down from previous years.
I know we are returning far fewer AR lenses due to scratches and using a few reliable brands has played a major roll in this. I remember early on when a lensometer would easily scratch an AR coated lens - now mostly only serious abuse seems to affect most of the major brands.
Thanks Jim, for making above statement that might make some of the trades poeple re-think the brainwash they are getting from big time advertising.Originally Posted by Jim G
In above poll it also shows that House Brands are in 2nd place together with Zeiss at this date.
Hey
I had to vote for other since we use in our office, Alize. There is a difference between Crizal and Alize. Prior to release of Alize we used Crizal. For overall quality nothing beats Alize
Christina
Vivix
I support a very small independent lab so that rules out ordering Crizal. I also use a variety of lens designs and materials that are not on the Carat approved lens list. Vivix can be had on a wider range of products, which leads to a higher failure rate. It's a dilemma that's for sure.
Robert
The better Zeiss coatings are our favourites, Carat SET and Gold Carat SET
We've actually based the range of lenses we dispense on the fact that they can be Foundation coated.
Panamics and Comforts get Crizal, and if it's Hi Index 1.7 then we go with Hoya and their S.Hi-Vision, both excellent products.
Yes, I agree, AR has changed a lot over the last couple of years.
oh, man... I love the Zeiss coatings, they rock! We used to get them on Varilux lenses (farmed out of our store to a local wholesale lab) before our own specialties lab started doing them in house with UTMC.
I think the only reason I even favour UTMC is that my company uses it... aside from the fact that we haven't had any problems with scratching or clarity (as we did with our old coating, which I can't remember what it was called), and I have 3 pairs of eyewear with UTMC'ed lenses and after the abuse they take working in the lab, at home and at play, I haven't noticed anything than one or two *very* faint scratches between the pairs.
We use alize whenever possible.
SOLA already has an anti-reflex coating that makes Crizal Alizé and all other ARs totally obsolete!
I just remembered, I already posted it a few months back.
CLICK!
and I posted it on the thread named ...
Last edited by rinselberg; 09-07-2004 at 01:27 AM.
If you guy's would get a little into the theoretical and practical nitty gritties of how AR coatings are made you would not have to rely on big company brainwash advertising.
SOLA already has an anti-reflex coating that makes Crizal Alizé and all other ARs totally obsolete!
We use alize whenever possible
love the Zeiss coatings, they rock
For overall quality nothing beats Alize
the only reason I even favour UTMC is that my company uses it...
The Alize is a lot easier to clean than Teflon...
A lot easier to clean.
For-Life
Did you actually point your mouse and click on the line where it said to CLICK! in my post?
???
OK -- NO NEED TO MOUSE CLICK, JUST LOOK AT WHAT I POSTED RIGHT AFTER THE NEXT POST BY mrba
... and I'm outa here!
Last edited by rinselberg; 09-06-2004 at 08:43 PM.
Rinsel Tinsel... Please provide a little "quod eratDid you actually point your mouse and click on the line where it said to CLICK! in my post?
demonstrandum"
Regards,
The Bat
CRIZAL ALIVE
The credit for this new and previously unknown product, which is a clear improvement over the puzzling and unfortunately all too French sounding Crizal Alizé -- belongs entirely to Customer Care at SOLA Technologies: SOLA lab in Hebron, Kentucky.
Oh-oh! Did I just say "unfortunately all too French sounding" --? TAKE THAT ONE WITH A GRAIN OF SALT if you prefer, depending on your political leanings. Any perceived national or international political repercussions of this post are strictly secondary to its purpose. And the purpose of this post? Not much: I just thought it was a good "funny" for this Which ARs? thread.
I posted this a few months ago on the old "Customer Lingo" thread.
:)
Last edited by rinselberg; 09-07-2004 at 01:22 AM.
I am just saying that they took the product and made it better.
Yes, I agree: Everywhere I look, someone is saying that Crizal Alizé is a remarkable improvement over the original Crizal.
I am not sure that everyone has caught on to me, but I was only trying to offer a little joke! I don't usually joke around very much in the OPTICAL forums, but I just remembered that post I made a few months back about Crizal ALIVE. That's ALIVE with a "V". Not ALIZE with a "Z".
From the POV of someone who uses eyeglasses, I have what I consider a very accurate data point here from For-Life about the relative merits of SOLA Teflon Vs. Crizal Alizé. They're both products that I have been reading about on the Web. In fact, I saw where For-Life made this very same point before about Teflon Vs. Alize, but now he has affirmed and even enlarged on it for us (or at least for me.)
I have not yet had any lenses with AR, but from all the Internet sleuthing that I have been up to, my impression has been that SOLA Teflon is very comparable in performance with the original Crizal -- in so far as everything that an AR coating is supposed to do and NOT do (like peel off!) Now it appears that Crizal Alizé has raised the bar for AR performance, in so far as resistance to dirt and smudging and the ease with which the lenses are wiped clean.
And once again, I'm "outta here!"
PS: Don't worry -- I did not try to vote in the ARs poll!
Last edited by rinselberg; 09-06-2004 at 09:53 PM.
OK, I think it just hit me, how what I meant as just a modest little joke could have been mistaken for an attempt to make a serious input. Nobody can figure out what CRIZAL ALIZE or CRIZAL "ALIVE" could possibly have to do with SOLA -- right? Well, I sent some Email to SOLA Technologies in Kentucky to ask if their lab could put Crizal Alizé on the new SOLAOne progressive. The answer was NO. And when the Email came back they had it spelled as Crizal ALIVE instead of Crizal ALIZE. For certain reasons (which I could explain but I doubt that it would be that interesting to you) that typo just struck me as really very funny. In fact, I don't think it was a typo, I think it was exactly like one of those "accidents" that President Bush seems to have with the English language on a somewhat regular basis.
AND some SOLA lenses have been available with CRIZAL, or so says the data that I found on the Internet. I think that you would have to do it the other way around, order the SOLA lens from an Essilor lab -- I had it the wrong way around. :hammer:
Last edited by rinselberg; 09-07-2004 at 01:33 AM.
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