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Thread: office edger- how many jobs per hour?

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    office edger- how many jobs per hour?

    For those of you who are edging in an office setting, how many jobs per hour can you complete on your edger? My boss got me a gerber coburn that I love but I wish it was a bit faster. I just want to know if my expectations are realistic. I am averaging about 3 per hour. It could go slightly faster except we sell many semi rimless and ar and those take time.

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    From a lab stand point we look at jobs per man per hour per edger. Obviously product mix can affect this but we run 8-10 per hour regardless. Consider cr39 @ 2 minutes per job Poly no polish @ 3:30 per job. AR and High Index with polish 5:45 per job. That is strictly cycle time and does not account for safety bevel or size check. Your 3 per hour may not be blazing but as long as you are producing quality work who's counting.

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    Master OptiBoarder LENNY's Avatar
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    The slowest edger I ever saw, but the very good one was producing 3 full rimless an hour with polish.
    In a mix you need to do as many as calibrated edger can cut.
    We do about 30-35 jobs in 5 hours!

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    I'm using an Essilor Gamma here - glazing a single full frame in 4-5 minutes. I manually groove every supra job with a separate groover, which means they take 7-8 minutes. Don't currently do rimless here, so cannot give figures for that.

    Our machine is getting old and is slowing down - but I can still comfotably predict that 7-10 jobs an hour is more than possible.

    When I was working on the edger only (in my previous incarnations as a technician) - I was glazing 50 jobs a day, over a 7 hour shift. But that was with a Briot edger, and it was the slowest machine I've ever used.

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    Thanks guys I just upgraded from a briot. The briot was old, slow and was always making mistakes.
    The new edger is slightly faster but not much but it does produce beautiful work!
    I do not have a manual groover but the thought had crossed my mind.
    So out of curiosity is there and edger that is in the middle faster and beautiful results?

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    I finished all my lenses by hand. I've yet to find an edger that I'm 100% pleased with the final results.

    The gamma works for me, because it's very very basic, and means I get to make the decisions. The briot I used liked to improvise, with devestating, and very expensive results. We got rid of it when it munched (for the umpteenth time) some 1.67 Transitions varifocal (I was raging ).

    There are many people with infinitely more experience than I have, so I'm sure they can help with other suggestions.

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    Thanks. I have been contemplating finishing everything by hand to speed it up a bit. Our briot killed so many expensive lenses! This machine does exactly what it is supposed to do and they come out beautiful every time! I just would like it to be a bit fasters but maybe I am being unrealistic.

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    OptiBoard Professional Flux3r's Avatar
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    we have a lex 1000 from santinelli and i do around 7 an hour on average, sometimes more sometimes less depending on what else i have to do .

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    factors to consider: who is doing the marking, blocking, layout, final assembly? Or is the person doing the edging just standing at the machine cutting? Obviously these factors affect the number of jobs per hour.

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    How does the santinelli perform as far as quality of the lenses when they come out?

    Fjpod, I have an auto tracer/ blocker that is fantastic! So I will have a bunch of jobs blocked up ready to go. So I just throw a new job in the edger as soon as the last one comes out. I utilize the time the edger is running to check in and clean up jobs and prep jobs so there is very little time wasted. The 3 jobs per hour is mainly the machine with a little sizing time in there.

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    If I'm the only one in the lab, and by some miracle I have a solid hour of uninterrupted time, I will usually get 7-8 jobs done on our Coburn CPE 4000. That's with some grooved pairs, AR, and a safety bevel on everything.

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    Hmm manual are you polishing grooved lenses and using the ar safety feature?

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    Quote Originally Posted by azaria567 View Post
    The 3 jobs per hour is mainly the machine with a little sizing time in there.
    !!! The edger takes 10 minutes for each lens??

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    I will have to time it today! It takes several minutes to cut, groove, polish and bevel. (We sell a ton of semi rimless, I could polish by hand but haven't found a rouge I like for poly yet)
    Luckily semi rimless is almost always on size. For everything else I have to downsize a couple times. I have already had to recalibrate and adjust the settings to get them to cut on size and it is out of whack again.

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    Quote Originally Posted by azaria567 View Post
    Hmm manual are you polishing grooved lenses and using the ar safety feature?
    I usually don't polish, only if the patient requests it. As far as the AR feature, it depends on the prescription. Higher minus lenses yes, lower powers and plus lenses no. I double pad every AR lens and so far have not had any problems with slippage. The important thing is to do everything while the edger is running - marking, blocking, assembly, inspecting/etc...so the only time the edger isn't running is when you're taking one lens out and inserting the next. Once you get into a rhythm you can greatly increase your productivity - at least as much as your edger will let you.

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    Ok I will try to do more finishing on my own. My boss wants all semi rimless and high minus rx polished and so that is sucking up a lot of time. I already do as much as I can while the edger is running and I still end up sitting and waiting for it to finish.
    I think it is probably all the polish we are doing. I will have to start doing polish by hand and see if that helps as well as adjust the settings again so it is cutting on size.

    So while I am asking questions, the rouge I have polishes cr 39 really well but not great on poly. Is that just the nature of poly or is there a product/ technique to get a high luster polish on poly?

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    Quote Originally Posted by azaria567 View Post
    How does the santinelli perform as far as quality of the lenses when they come out?
    they come out consistent. these machines do have quirks, as with any edger. but it seems to stay consistent. polish is quite nice, better than my had polisher. grooves are good, safety bevel is good (all these can be adjusted btw.)

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    Ok so I started doing safety bevels by hand and that helped a lot! I timed my semi rimless and it took 11 min to cut 1 lens, that is cut, groove, polish and safety bevel. So that is where I am losing my time. So now I am looking into finding a high luster polish compound so I can polish by hand.

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    Optiboard Professional Bill West's Avatar
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    While you people were busy edging x # of lenses per hour, I was busy selling 2 or 3 pair of glasses per hour. Guess who had the greater margin of profit at the end of the day. I was only working 3.5 days a week. I choose to be a dispensing retail optician in 1977 and quit being a finishing tech. Best move I ever made.

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    Well thank you Bill, that was incredibly impertinent to my question.
    I actually enjoy being a lab tech. I have the flexibility of working after hours. :)

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    What type of edger is this and what type of material resulted in a 11 minute cycle per lens? I would check settings specifically number of rotations during polish cycle. Typically 2 rotations each for rough and rimless/flat cut total time of 3 minutes with 3-4 rotations for polish for another minute. Groove shouldn't take more than :30 seconds. Total time shouldn't be more than 5:30 You are correct is stating that this machine is slow...painfully slow. In my world that 11 minutes is longer than my lunch break

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    It is the Coburn CPE 4000 and poly.
    The rep set it up to groove after it polishes bc the grooves were coming out really dirty. But now it grooves, polishes, grooves, bevels.

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    I agree with the set up just concerned with cycle times Is there a way to compare defaults vs what you are running now? Poly groove should average no more than 5-6 minutes even if high power

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    Hm ok thanks. I will look and see what I can find out when I go in tonight.

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    Quote Originally Posted by azaria567 View Post
    I will have to time it today! It takes several minutes to cut, groove, polish and bevel. (We sell a ton of semi rimless, I could polish by hand but haven't found a rouge I like for poly yet)
    Luckily semi rimless is almost always on size. For everything else I have to downsize a couple times. I have already had to recalibrate and adjust the settings to get them to cut on size and it is out of whack again.
    That shouldn't be, I use an old Kappa M10 and one cut almost every job. Keep in mind the edging follows the trace, bad trace = bad edging.

    We had a bad thrust bearing on the lens clamp a couple years ago. The cycle times got ridiculous and started causing all manner of problems. I'm not familiar with your machine, but if you bought it used it could have something similar.

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