Wow, Allen you elluded to a process that doesn't require polishing, which is cut to coat or whaever the jargon is for it today. I never said that is what you are doing or that I know your process. By the way I did actually see a LOH generator and polisher in action I was their about 4 hours watching the thing work it's magic and the technology is impressive.
You seem to think that if a person doesn't have first hand experience with the specific equipment you use that they don't understand it. The equipment is nothing fancy, it is the processes and the tight control of these processes that are what give these lenses theleel of accuracy every manufacturer is gloating about. I KNOW THAT EVERYONE DOESN'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT THEY ARE DOING. That includes the manufacturers, some are still refining their processes, yet they are selling what they could some day be able to do with their equipment today. The average optician isn't going to know better.
In your case you use the SEIKO products, which means you are licensing the technology from SEIKO and a lab that uses the SHAMIR lenses licenses their technology form SHAMIR. And so on and so forth. I have a copy of Adobe Illustartor on my home PC, it doesn't make me a graphic design artist. In your case and in many others the lens desing you license is where the ideal performane comes from, your process and machines are supposed to make sure that the design is transfered as accurately as possible to the lens blanks. Are SEIKO lenses good sure I will even for sake of arguement say they are the best, but if your process doesn't accurately reproduce that int he lens blank then I get crap anyway. Also as Darryl mentioned and I have mentioned in previous posts the ANSI doesn't differentiate from a FF progressive and a traditional progressive. So even with the FF equipment you can provide the same level of inaccuracies than a traditionally processed lens.
Here is what you can provide that will make me consider a FF product. What tolerances to the finished product do you hold yourself to? Here are some specifics I would be interested in knowing:
Warpage? (ANSI )
Surface Astigmatism in the Distance zone? (ISO ) (since your surface incorporates the prescription and design on the same surface are you holdng yourself to the ISO tolerance on surface astigmatism or are you opting to try and meet the ANSI's total power tolerance)
Here is a quote from the tech bulletin on the ANSI change from 99 to 05:
The two significant changes in ANSI Z80.1-2005 are justified
from a manufacturing capability point of view and also from
a consistency viewpoint.
The effect on the lab should be a significant decrease in
rejects thereby improving delivery time and cost containment of
prescription prices.
The decrease in visual acuity on the wearer should be negligible.
One of those significant changes was the tolerance on progressive lenses and their cylinder tolerance. It went from 0.12D to 0.16D not a significant change but a change none the less.
Here is another quote for you:
Another paper by Judith Perrigin, et al, “A Comparison of
Clinical Refractive Data Obtained by Three Examiners” reported
the repeatability of refraction on 32 subjects was 98% within +
0.50 D (American Journal of Optometry & Physiological Optics, Vol
59, No 6)
Within that's a significant amount of power, but if only 2% of people can be effected by a power difference of 0.50D what niche is it that gets filled by a more accurate progressive especially one that's shrouded in secrecy?
I know that ANSI is the minimum tolerance but every lab that I do business with will meet or exceed this. I have seen NO LABS with documentation that they will do better than this tolerance so that's what I hold all labs to.
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