The Innovative Cut-to-Coat Process for Low Cost Manufacturing Digital Rx Lenses

描述(申请人提供)：今天，眼科行业的处方制造是一个复杂的过程，有许多生产步骤、大量的批量处理和大量的人工处理，特别是在涂布步骤中。有了数字表面处理技术，设计师能够翻译复杂的设计概念(个性化和高级非球面校正等)。需要完成从画板到真正的镜头的改进。目前的数码镜片堆焊生产系统普遍存在价格昂贵、结构复杂、体积庞大等问题，限制了其广泛的应用。巨大的投资和对劳动技能的高要求迫使光学实验室工作转移到美国以外的地方，减少了美国的工作岗位，即使这个行业是一个服务行业，工作应该在美国本地完成。 在这项拟议的研究中，我们计划开发切割到镀膜数字表面处理技术-一种涂层工艺，以取代光学透镜制造中使用的精细/抛光步骤，用于数字透镜制造。为了匹配从1.499(CR-39)到1.74(高折射率)不同折射率的镜片，将配制几种不同折射率的镀膜溶液。这项创新将把自由曲面技术带到一个新的水平：(1)真正的自由曲面光学；(2)低资本投资；(3)自由曲面透镜的可负担性；(4)通过省去抛光步骤，保留本地(特别是在美国)的自由曲面透镜制造工作，以便数字表面处理过程和操作劳动力的总投资将显著降低，从而允许大多数美国小型Rx实验室(批发和零售)采用这项技术。建议的新“镀膜切割”技术开启了在处方工艺中非常高效地使用半成品空白镜片的大门，并且是一系列新技术，将构成一种新颖的处方镜片制造技术：在线旋涂硬质涂层和AR涂层技术，以及使用环保塑料的预遮挡半成品镜片技术。这项拟议技术的成功不仅将提高生产效率(节省抛光时间和人力以及对抛光设备的投资)，还将消除对环境无害的抛光泥浆和其他消耗品的使用。 与最先进的切割抛光技术相比，使用切割到镀膜技术生产数字镜头估计可以节省三分之一到一半的成本(50-75美元)。基于目前光学镜片市场1%的渗透率，这可能会为这家光学零售商每年节省3000万至6000万美元的总成本。随着市场渗透率的增加，当市场充分发展时，光学零售商总共可以节省高达数十亿美元的成本，对美国消费者的潜在节省可能更高。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Today Rx-manufacturing in the ophthalmic industry is a complex process with many production steps, substantial batch processing and a lot of manual handling especially in the coating steps. With digital surfacing technology, designers are able to translate intricate design concepts (personalized and advanced aspheric corrections etc.) needed to accomplish improvement from the drawing board into a real lens. Current digital lens surfacing production systems are generally expensive, complicated and bulky which limits its wide applications. The significant investment and high demanding in labor skills drive the optical lab works to outside US, decreasing jobs in US even this industry is a service industry which work should be done locally in US. In this proposed research, we plan to develop the cut-to-coat digital surfacing technology - a coating process to replace the fining/polishing steps used in optical lens fabrication for the digital lens manufacturing. A couple of coating solutions with different refractive index will be formulated in order to match lenses with different refractive index from 1.499 (CR-39), to 1.74 (high Index). This innovation will bring the freeform technology to a new level: (1) truly freeform optics; (2) low capital investment; (3) affordability of the freeform lenses and (4) retaining freeform lens fabrication work locally (especially in US) by eliminating the polishing step so that the total investment of the digital surfacing process and operation labor will be significant lower to allow the most US small Rx labs (wholesale and retail) to adopt this technology. The proposed new "Cut-To-Coat" technology opens the door to use very efficiently semi-finished blank lenses being fully hard- and AR-coated on the front side in the Rx-process, and is a series of new technologies which will compose a novel Rx lens manufacturing technology: the inline spin-on hard coating and AR coating technologies and the pre-blocking semi-finished lens technology using environmentally benign plastics. The success of this proposed technology will not only increase production efficiency (saving on polishing time and labors as well as investment in polishing equipment) but also eliminate the usage of non-environmentally benign polishing slurries and other consumables. The cost saving is estimated to be one third to half ($50 - $75) to produce the digital lenses using the cut-to-coat technology comparing the state-of-the-art cut-to-polish technology. Based on the current 1 percent penetration by the optical lens market, this could result in total cost savings to the optical retailer of between $30 million and $60 million annually. As the market penetration increases, the total cost savings to the optical retailer could be as high as billions when the market is fully developed, and the potential savings to the American consumer could be even higher.