How many of us are doing in-house edging and on what equipment? We just started doing some in house edging on an older HorizonII. it is really working out nicely. Yes, I know that far better machines are on the market, but as a first step and a look I told you so(edging..it can work$$$) to the owner..it will work just fine for now.
Fezz
:cheers:
We use the Essilor Delta, and it works great. We do out our own grooving, edging, tinting, and soldering. It saves us a lot of money and helps keep us competitive. Our lease is running out and are looking to upgrade to a better machine.
Fezz, I've used the National Optronics Horizon patternless edgers since '95, started with the Horizon III, then upgraded to the 6E, and the tracer upgrade also, and I looked at their new 7E in Vegas, (it even drills for rimless in the edge cycle), the 6E grooves and that's great for me, that's a serious reason to get one right there. another factor, and important to us, is that it is a "dry cut" system, which makes it's environmental impact nil. It will process everything except glass, but we rarely do a glass lens job, so it's a moot point, isn't it? likely one of the best investments we've ever made..
I use the Gamma system. Very good. (I am much happier with it than Briot 512i previously used).
Chimperial Optical-what a great place to work!
We use a 6E & the 4T tracer. Love them!
We use AIT Combimax and have no complaints.
Regardless of what you use...when you first start edging in-house, it'san emancimating feeling. Before I started finishing in-house, I felt like I always made money, but didn't keep much of it. Now we have control over what lenses we buy, and can control the turn-around time. And:) , there's $$ left over at the end of the month!
In Europe every optician has his workshop doing his own edging. In my younger years I have seen and worked on the old ceramic edger driven by a leather belt drive and a water container with a tap dripping the water on the stone and draining into a metal pail below.Originally Posted by Johns
Weco came up with flip down device that would turn the lens clamped between 2 axles and a metal plate were the former plate would stop which gave you some sort of size adjustment. Of course this device would just turn the lens on the flat ceramic stone. A -10.00 D glass lens would take hours to come down a flat bevel which then had to be bevelled by hand. Large lenses or thick lenses would be reduced with chipping pliers, which was an art by itself, doing it without breaking the lens. A very modern device followed with the diamond cutter that would follow the curves of a pattern and you could cut lenses before chipping with pliers.
In the early fifties American Optical brought out the fist automatic bevel edger called Bevelmatic which had a ceramic stone and this changed the industry to modern times, But you still had to pre-cut the lenses with the diamond cutter and re-dress the ceramic wheel with a diamond.
Good Greif Chris, I always thought I was the only one that remembered the old ceramic edgers. Was trained on one the first year or two in the business. AO also had a lens cutter that used a glass cutter and pattern, then you used the cribbing pliers to cut off the excess.
Jaqui, there is some more to it than just remembering. You in this case, like me, we know the optical back from the primitive days and have evolved and followed technology into today's modern way of making and finishing lenses.
Many, probably most of the Optiboarders are of a more recent generation and probably could not even put a decent looking bevel on a -5.00D lens by hand.
I guess that today with all the new machinery you dont have to anymore, but nobody can take away the expirience we gained in the old days, because we had to learn the why and the how to do it.
In 1963 I decided to start a wholesale lab. I was very good at finishing lenses but new nothing about surfacing. I got onto Coburn, then still family owned, who had pamphlets showing the latest and first automatic generator being operated by a sexy blonde in shorts. In the text it said something that from now on you could hire people of the street to make lenses with Coburns new lab machinery. I called them, the sales rep flew in to see me, and I still remember marked down my order for a fully equiped optical lab on the inside of a mtach cover. No contract and no signatures. Everything arrived 2 month later, got setup and they got paid.
However the deal with hiting people of the street was baloney and I ended up having to hire some very qualified lens surfacing people.
That kind of advertising is still the rage - except where are the cuties in shorts?
Anyway, I sometime go to the edging equipment booths just to remind them that they are being less than honest when they tell the unsuspecting doctor that the receptionist they hired yesterday can be edging all of their lenses in a week in her spare time and saving them more than the edger costs in a year!:angry:
BTW. When I started in wholesale, we not only had ceramic hand stones - which I still prefer for glass - but one of our automatic edgers was large ceramic wheel (perhaps 18" in dia.) which edged a pair of rimless glass lenses at a time. Of course they had been scribed and chipped first. We were also trying out the first Coburn (Okie from Muskogee) diamond edgers that you could put a whole glass lens into and .. shazam! .. out cam an edged lens ... and that was before 8-track tapes. Betcha that cutie in shorts could have even edged a lens back then - that is if she could also size and finnish it on a ceramic hand stone.
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