Schneider/Satisloh Digital Surfacing Equipment Advice

[higgy]

Thanks up front for anyone who has any advice or thoughts about this topic. Really appreciate you taking time out of your day to help!

Our lab up to this point has done all edging in house and surfaced all pals, tri's, and bi's that don't have AR. All other non stock lenses that need AR are outsourced to an outside lab. Our old surfacing equipment has finally bit the dust. So now we are outsourcing everything that isn't stock.

Our lab is looking to acquire either Schneider's Prolab/Sprint series or Satisloh digital surfacing equipment. So my question is does anyone have any real world experience with this equipment? Of course we have heard the sales rep's angle but we all know that differs from the reality of day to day production.

We will take any thoughts! Tech support quality level, cost of consumables, repair cost, ease of use, reliability, training programs, really anything you guys can think of that we should be thinking about.

Thanks again!

[theGross1]

Our satisloh line is scheduled to arrive Monday. I'll answer questions after that

[higgy]

Our satisloh line is scheduled to arrive Monday. I'll answer questions after that

Awesome! Looking forward to your thoughts.

[higgy]

Also if anyone can tell us why they decided to go with the company and equipment they did would be great too.

[other_bill_fea]

We have four Schneider freeform lines, and another one showing up literally today. We're using Masters, SmartXPs, and a ModuloXp is what's showing up today. In general, I've found the Schneider equipment to be able to do pretty much anything I've thrown at it. I'll also give their techs credit, because usually when I'm calling them it's because I'm trying to do something that the machine isn't "supposed" to be able to do, but they'll still help me instead of giving me a line about it being 'beyond the range of the machine'.

Schneider also seems to have more recent technology in their surfacing equipment, with their newer generators doing auto-calibration and enhanced motor control.

I don't have any experience with Satis Digital equipment, so I can't really comment on it. Schneider does also has the benefits of being a less expensive option, and are more independent than SatisLoh.

[higgy]

Thanks other bill that's exactly the type of info we are looking for. We have good working relationships with our techs with National Optronics and Santinelli with our edgers. If I could ask what would you rate the reliability of the equipment so far and if you've had a breakdown how is the response and were the repair parts expensive?

When we've had production come to a halt with the edgers Optronics and Santinelli the response is pretty much immediate and they hang with you until the problem is troubleshooted. I would assume Schneider has been like that for you reading your reply. Sometimes the tech support for our previous surfacing equipment was lacking.