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

用于低成本制造数字接收镜头的创新切割涂层工艺

• 批准号: 8123713
• 负责人: Haixing Zheng
• 金额: $ 10.88万
• 依托单位: CHEMAT TECHNOLOGY, INC.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-09-01 至 2012-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8123713
• 关键词: Accounting; Adopted; Alloys; American; Automation; Automobile Driving; Benign; Capital; Caring; Complex; Cost Savings; Environment; Equipment; Eye; Foundations; Future; Growth; Health; Industry; Investments; Lead; Life Style; Living Standards; Manuals; Marketing; Occupations; Optics; Patients; Penetration; Phase; Plastics; Polishes; Process; Production; Refractive Indices; Research; Resistance; Sales; Savings; Series; Services; Side; Site; Solutions; Surface; System; Technology; Testing; Time; Translating; United States; Work; aging population; base; cost; design; digital; indexing; innovation; lens; manufacturing process; new technology; novel; operation; prototype; skills; success

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.

描述（由申请人提供）：如今，眼科行业中的 Rx 制造是一个复杂的过程，具有许多生产步骤、大量的批量处理和大量的手动操作，尤其是在涂层步骤中。借助数字曲面技术，设计人员能够将完成改进所需的复杂设计概念（个性化和先进的非球面校正等）转化为真正的镜头。目前的数字镜片表面处理生产系统通常价格昂贵、复杂且体积庞大，限制了其广泛应用。巨大的投资和对劳动力技能的高要求迫使光学实验室工作转移到美国境外，减少了美国的就业机会，即使这个行业是服务业，工作应该在美国本地完成。 在这项拟议的研究中，我们计划开发切割涂层数字表面处理技术 - 一种涂层工艺，以取代数字镜片制造中光学镜片制造中使用的精炼/抛光步骤。将配制几种具有不同折射率的涂层溶液，以匹配具有不同折射率（从 1.499（CR-39）到 1.74（高折射率）的镜片）。这项创新将把自由曲面技术提升到一个新的水平：（1）真正的自由曲面光学； (2)资金投入低； (3) 自由曲面镜片的可承受性；(4) 通过消除抛光步骤，在本地保留自由曲面镜片制造工作（尤其是在美国），从而使数字曲面处理工艺和操作劳动力的总投资显着降低，从而允许大多数美国小型 Rx 实验室（批发和零售）采用该技术。拟议的新“Cut-To-Coat”技术为在 Rx 工艺中高效使用在正面进行全硬质和增透膜半成品毛坯镜片打开了大门，并且是一系列新技术，将构成一种新颖的 Rx 镜片制造技术：内联旋涂硬质涂层和增透膜技术以及使用环保塑料的预封闭半成品镜片技术。该技术的成功不仅可以提高生产效率（节省抛光时间和劳动力以及抛光设备的投资），而且可以消除非环保抛光浆料和其他消耗品的使用。 与最先进的切割抛光技术相比，使用切割涂层技术生产数码镜片的成本预计可节省三分之一到一半（50 - 75 美元）。根据目前光学镜片市场 1% 的渗透率，这每年可为眼镜零售商节省 3000 万至 6000 万美元的总成本。随着市场渗透率的提高，当市场充分发展时，为眼镜零售商节省的总成本可能高达数十亿美元，而为美国消费者节省的潜在成本可能更高。