Pro's and Con's of In-House Edging?

[optigrrl]

Posted by jewel: Are you a military installation, AAFES?

Neither, we just don't accept insurance other than medicare for post-cataract surgery.

Right now, having just hired the second optician there is probably time. When we increase the practice size we would have to hire a third to be able to edge without sacrificing customer service on the floor.

[jewel]

Posted by jewel: Are you a military installation, AAFES?

Neither, we just don't accept insurance other than medicare for post-cataract surgery.

Right now, having just hired the second optician there is probably time. When we increase the practice size we would have to hire a third to be able to edge without sacrificing customer service on the floor.

Okay. I see. We only have three of us in our store waiting to hire a fourth part timer when we get a doctor in June. So, we are covered just fine.
We don't take insurances either, but I'm sure the doctors side of the practice will.
I have not decided whether to take the full time position that'll be offered to me or not. Haha. I'm older now and like my time at home with my garden and animals. The money would be nice, but even so its not much anyway.

[ilanh]

Another alternative is to find a place that sells stock lenses and to have them edge it for you at $6-7/per job. I have found this solution to work well if the place is fairly close and you can send an employee once or twice weekly to pick up the jobs. I decided not to purchase an in-house edger because the only jobs that I would reliably use it for are single vision stock lenses. However, with single vision stock lenses you are pretty much limited on the plus side to about +2.50 (otherwise it's too thick). For minus stock lenses there are definite savings in buying the Poly, 1.60, 1.67 aspheric lenses with AR coating (the equivalent lenses would be quite expensive from a surfacing lab). With CR39 the savings are not that enormous because these are surfaced for reasonable rates by most labs.

[Johns]

I tried to find reasons NOT to buy an edger, but the pros far outhweighed the cons.

Just the cost of the lower priced lenses was enough to make the argument, let alone the edging fees, and waiting 2 days instead of 15 minutes.

We bought a "Jetson" type edger - The Combimax from AIT, and it is almost an employee in itself. It grooves, safety bevels, cuts all materials. It practically runs itself.

In house edging was the best decission we ever made.