Would You?

[chip anderson]

A question on the quality of in-house lens molding.

If a customer came in wearing a relative new glasses with varilux comfort or equal or better high quality progressive wanting new frames with new lenses. Would you fill the Rx with in-house molded lenses?

Have any of you done so in any significant volume sufficent to find out if the patient's can tell the difference?

Remember changing patient from Old Rx or poor quality lenses does not count.

Chip

[LENNY]

Not exact but an answer!!!

We purchased 3 Optometric practices in the last 5 years.
They were Varilux ONLY practices!
We switched EVERYBODY to Adaptor and later to Sola XL lenses (we had a greate price for those lenses at that time).
10% noticed some difference beween RX and frame change we talked hem into the new design. About 2% we had to put back in Varilux.
My guess is if you use the same RX and the same frame with the same measurements te % will be much higher.

[chip anderson]

Thanks Lenny, but I am trying to find out about the relative quality of in-house moulding machine product vs any 1st quality lens.

Specificly, I am trying to find out if they are junk, which I can advertize I don't carry (with the subtle insinuation that compeditors that specialize in fast do). Or if they are medium good-as-most product. Or if they are an excellent product and I should get on the band wagon.

Personally I don't know where they fit in the over all pecking order of the industry other than speed/profit wise. If qualified consumers can't tell the differance, they are probably pretty good. If only those that have never had a good product can use them or if the patient diss-satisfaction rate is high, then they are probably fast high profit junk. I'd really like to know which. I know what the sales/marketing people on both sides say, but then you all know I don' t trust salesmen.

Chip

[Rich]

I'd suggest shopping the competition.
Invest a few bucks and go in (or send someone in) to buy the lenses or a pair of glasses. Not only will you find out how the lenses are but you'll see their entire process from a patients point of view.
The information should be well worth the investment.

[shanbaum]

It's a good question, Chip, and while I can't answer it directly, I would point out that the dustbin of history is crowded with a number of waves of the furture of this ilk, and there may be one or more reasons for that, about which I can't help but speculate.

Most of these outfits were in a different league from the major lens vendors in terms of resources; it would be truly remarkable if any of the former were able to develop lens designs as sophisticated as those of the latter, in addition to the work required to develop the process itself.

There may be some technical hurdles that are just too hard to overcome to make the technology valuable (that is, make it a superior value to conventional processing) - it's interesting that when J&J (a company with unlimited resources, on an ophthalmic scale) purchased Innotech, they basically dumpstered that technology along with the business.

It doesn't take much in the way of technical issues to kill such a product. Consider Matrix, which has had the backing of a major lens supplier - it really works pretty well, and produces quality lenses of the same design as conventionally-produced lenses, but it hasn't made much of an impact, and I think that's because edge thickness on plus lenses can't be controlled as precisely as with conventional processing - just as it can't be with molding systems (the Innotech technique to overcome that doesn't count, since their approach caused miscentration).

I do hope that you get some responses to your original query; I'd be interested to see them.

[Chris Ryser]

chip anderson said:
A question on the quality of in-house lens molding.

If a customer came in wearing a relative new glasses with varilux comfort or equal or better high quality progressive wanting new frames with new lenses. Would you fill the Rx with in-house molded lenses?

Have any of you done so in any significant volume sufficent to find out if the patient's can tell the difference?

Remember changing patient from Old Rx or poor quality lenses does not count.

Chip

Chip,

I invested in one of the first systems coming out in the 80s. Lost all my $ 30,000 together with 35 others I know of. Learned about it after investment was gone.

The optical quality is depending on the glass moulds and can be top quality, that is no problem.

The problem is the curing. Different lens thicknesses and powers define the curing process and each one needs different curing cycles in order to have a properly cured lens. How then can you cure a simple +1.00 lens together with a -6.00 together in the same curing cycle which in lens factories is done in between 14 to
16 hours. If at the lens manufacturer lenses are taken out of the mould to early they are undercured, britlle and dont want to tint right.

In the in house system you do them in abolute minimum times. You have to look at the finished piece of plastic not the curves. The plastic might get distortion later on if not properly and evenly cured throughout the lens and the optical curves can be affected.

Curves and lens types are defined by the moulds which you can buy at a lot of different manufacturers.

How about consulting our advisor/member at ESSilor and get from him the basics on lens casting.


Chris Ryser