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，眼科行业的RX制造是一个复杂的过程，具有许多生产步骤，大量的批处理处理以及大量的手动处理，尤其是在涂层步骤中。借助数字表面技术，设计师能够将需要改进的图纸改进为真正的镜头所需的复杂设计概念（个性化和高级非球员校正等）。当前的数字镜头表面生产系统通常是昂贵，复杂且笨重的，这限制了其广泛的应用。巨大的投资和高要求的劳动技能推动了光学实验室在我们外部工作，即使我们的工作也降低了这个行业，这是一个服务行业，应该在我们本地完成工作。 在这项拟议的研究中，我们计划开发剪切的数字曲面技术 - 涂层过程，以取代用于数字镜头制造的光学镜头制造中使用的罚款/抛光步骤。将制定具有不同折射率的几个涂料溶液，以使不同折射率（CR-39）到1.74（高索引）的折射率不同。这项创新将使自由形式的技术提高到新的水平：（1）真正的自由式光学元件； （2）低资本投资； （3）自由形镜头的负担能力和（4）通过消除抛光步骤来保留本地（尤其是在美国）的自由形镜头制造工作，从而使数字曲面过程和运营劳动的总投资将大大降低，以使最大的小RX Labs（批发和零售）采用这项技术。提出的新的“切割涂层”技术为RX过程中的前侧完全硬化和AR涂层打开了大门，这是一系列新技术，它将构成一种新型的RX镜头制造技术：使用环境技术和预盖技术的内线旋转涂料和AR涂层技术，并使用beni beni beni linens-finens-finens-finens-finens-finens-finens-finens-finens-finens-finens-finens-finens。这项提出的技术的成功不仅会提高生产效率（节省了抛光时间和劳动以及对抛光设备的投资），还消除了非环境良性良性抛光浆液和其他消耗品的使用。 据估计，使用剪切的技术比较最先进的剪切技术，估计节省成本是三分之一到一半（50美元至75美元）。基于当前的光学镜头市场的1％渗透，这可能导致光学零售商每年为3000万至6000万美元的光学零售商节省总成本。随着市场渗透率的增加，当市场充分发展时，对光学零售商的总成本节省可能高达数十亿美元，并且对美国消费者的潜在节省可能会更高。