Tinting Colors

[John Karamouzis]

Hello again ppl. I wish to all of you a happy new year. I wish our biggest problems could vanish in a moment :)
MY company wishes to change tinting colors and we are thinking to choose either Phantomresearch or BPI. I want to know how long do the colors last. If you can tint 1.56, 1.6 , 1.67. The tinting times of course. Maybe u have another company to suggest. We are using an SCL tinter with 5 Liter baths.

Thank you very much

[WFruit]

I have always had good experiences with BPI. How long they will last will depend on how many you are tinting and what temperature you keep the tints at.

[JMoondog]

My experience is with BPI kept at 200 degrees you can tint a sunglass in about 2 min. and the tints last about a week. The dark tint tend to to crap out faster and need to be replaces you could let all your light colors go for a couple weeks.

Tinting times all vary depending on the hardness of the scratch coat. If it Poly the only place it will tint is in the scratch coat. So ultra tough scratch coatings will take longer or not tint at all. No scratch coats on plastic will tint very very fast.

[FVCCHRIS]

I also swear by BPI products. I would add that you can significantly increase the life of any dye by keeping your tints "idling" at a lower temperature, mine sits at about 150 until I need to dye a lens. I then crank it up to 205, wait about 15 minutes, stir and tint away. Tinting higher index lenses will be trial and error. Good luck!

[Mauro.Airoldi]

3 years ago I done comparation test betwen BPI and Phantomresearch colour, on cr 39 I had +/- the same result on tinting time and resistance at UV (test 48 hours on QUV test only UV), on hight index BPI show bad resut afther UV test (cange of the colour),so now i use only Phantomresearch product. The right temperature is 200 f (or 93°C, i'm in europe), lower temperature give bad result in time and in color uniformity.
NOTE for best performance I use Deionize water (for color long life )

[Pogu]

We got a sample of BPI absolute grey and absolute brown a couple weeks ago. The tinted fantastic neutral colors that could be modified easily. They need changed after about a week; 170* 8-9hr/day, cranked up to working temp ~2hrs/day, sporadic 'warp factor 7.:angry:' high temp hard coat PAL/rush tint jobs, 30-40 tints a week.

-Mitch

[mauroventura]

Hi John.
I use Phantomresearch colors for 5 years and i am satisfied.We color (obviously with adjustment) cr39,1.56,1.60,1.67 .
I agree with Mauro.Airoldi ,best results using deionized water. Check , also , for a good control of color temperature solution and keep a homogeneous heat transfer to all tank color in order to improve convective effect and obtain a good temperature distribution in all tank's volume .

[mudmagnet]

Again I agree with Mauro, personally, I have not had great experience with Bpi or phantom.
For me the CERIUM range works well especially the shades range , pigmentation better on 1.6 and above.

Note tints need to be baked approx 60c (europe) for 1-2 hours after tinting to avoid leaching.

[MIOPE]

I has been using BPI for many years with good results.
I have two questions about tinting.
1.- How to tint poly with dark gray. The hardcoat we use is from Ultraoptics.
2.- The color of a dark color tinted lens (grey, brown mostly) is different while seen on artificial light (indoors) and on sun light. Can this be corrected?

[mudmagnet]

Yes WE have experience with Ultra optics, It will work ok with poly, again nothing personal with BPI, but on our experience we found the CERIUM tints held a better pigmentation.

Though if you could use thermally cured hardcoats again this will improve your distribution and tint absorbtion.

Good Luck

[Mauro.Airoldi]

1 Poly is a trouble because you color only hardcoat layers, The only suggestion is coat with colorable HC and if it is possible use Primer (in general primer help to color).
2 Difference in color with difference in light it is normal. The sensibility of the human eye is shown by the image,
The different light sorce give you +/- of yellow, green, blu… so your eyes estimate in different way the color of your lenses

Below shows the color emission temperature of some common light sources:

• sunlight (noon): 5 400 K
• ambient light in the daytime 6 500 K
• Light of the cloudy sky: 7 000 K
• Light of the cloudy weather: 8 000 - 10 000 K
• Luce del cielo sereno: da 10 000 a 18 000 K (il valore è più elevato per il cielo di colore azzurro intenso a nord)
• candle Light: 1 000 K
• domestic incandescent lamp (40 W) : 2 650 K
• Fluorescent lamp extra hot: 2 700 K Lampada fluorescente warm white (bianco caldo): 3 000 K (la luce appare di colore bianco-giallastro)
• Fluorescent lamp cool white : 4 000 K (la luce appare di colore bianchissimo)