Help with wax blocking...

[fjpod]

I know, I should switch to alloy,...

...but assuming that I will stay with wax, are there any tricks to preventing deblocking. Things like wax temperature, pre-heating the blocks?, curing time, generator speeds, blade type, etc.

Of course my deblocks occur on high Rx poly or hi-index. Maybe one lens every other day. Using Optek Profile SL generator.

[HarryChiling]

You could take off less material on each pass or up the number of passes. It may take longer to generate but you'll produce less torque on the lens and your probably not running a high production facility. Also make sure your wax is fresh, old wax or even wax with new wax being constantly mixed in can loose it's effectiveness.

[fjpod]

You could take off less material on each pass or up the number of passes. It may take longer to generate but you'll produce less torque on the lens and your probably not running a high production facility. Also make sure your wax is fresh, old wax or even wax with new wax being constantly mixed in can loose it's effectiveness.

Thanks for the input. You're right, we are not high output, maybe 10 jobs per day, 4 days per week. We started with brand new wax. We actually had more trouble at the beginning with the wax cracking until we got our generator speed/aggressiveness down pat. We also keep our wax very clean by washing and drying it. IMO opinion, our wax seems a bit brittle, as it usually cracks in the middle rather than separate from the block or the lens. And we do a lot of passes to minimize vibration and stress. In your experience is there a "better" wax, or all they all the same?

[WFruit]

One of the tricks I found for high minus lenses was to tell the generator that the lens was thicker than it actually was. This prevented the generator from "plowing" into the lens and deblocking it.

Overcleaning the wax, along with overheating it, can dry it out and make it more brittle. When I worked in a lab with wax, I kept the temperature barely above what it needed to be to still flow. This also reduced cooling times. What blocker are you using?

[fjpod]

One of the tricks I found for high minus lenses was to tell the generator that the lens was thicker than it actually was. This prevented the generator from "plowing" into the lens and deblocking it.

Overcleaning the wax, along with overheating it, can dry it out and make it more brittle. When I worked in a lab with wax, I kept the temperature barely above what it needed to be to still flow. This also reduced cooling times. What blocker are you using?

I'm using an old Optek TP 250 (I think).

So you say keep the wax cooler??

[braheem24]

I noticed with our wax, turning the heat off at night caused more deblocking.

Consistant temps 24hrs a day, barely melted and increasing diameter and lens blank thickness on the generator eliminated our deblocking issues.

[WFruit]

Keep it just a degree or two above the melting point (not too cool that the wax doesn't flow through the blocker).

We didn't have an issues turning it off at night, but we were using a Gerber blocker (that I can't for the life of me remember the name of. Something lite I think). It may be that with your blocker, as Braheem suggested, you need to keep it on all the time.