3D printing brings increased design freedom and efficiency to eyewear manufacturers. Manufacturing 3D-printed glasses allows companies to continuously improve designs and freely scale products to respond more effectively to market demand. Eyewear companies using advanced 3D printing technology can differentiate their brand from competitors by introducing more designs and by offering customized and personalized designs more cost-effectively than traditional manufacturing.
LuxCreo’s digitalized workflow for eyewear leverages LuxCreo’s industrial-grade printers, superior resins, and dynamic software enabling higher manufacturing agility of unique aesthetic and functional designs with enhanced product quality and performance. LuxCreo’s patented LEAP (Light Enabled Additive Production) platform powers advanced DLP 3D printers and provide the industry’s highest productivity, part performance, and design flexibility.
Benefits of 3D Glasses Manufacturing with LuxCreo
3D printing eyewear provides high-level detail, accuracy, and increased production speed for improved productivity and consumer satisfaction. Eyewear companies experience the following benefits by integrating 3D printing into their manufacturing process:
LuxCreo’s LEAP Additive Manufacturing Platform vs SLS 3D Printers
LuxCreo’s LEAP additive manufacturing platform combines advanced software, hardware, and high-performance resins to achieve transformational production benefits for eyewear manufacturing. Eyewear manufacturing is simplified and clear products are achieved with industry-leading durability.
SLS production process requires multiple process steps to smooth and color eyewear, leading to increased scrap rate, reduced production throughput, longer turnaround time, and lower performance final product
LuxCreo’s LEAP additive manufacturing platform Improves product performance and higher yield are achieved by eliminating excessive polishing steps, eliminating surface abrasions, cracks, water absorption that embrittle glasses made with SLS and other 3D printing methods that require significant surface smoothing.
LuxCreo direct print native color solution eliminates the dyeing steps required by other printing solutions.
LuxCreo’s LEAP Additive Manufacturing Platform
Eyewear manufacturers are continually looking for ways to bring new innovations to market and improve their manufacturing process. LuxCreo’s LEAP 3D printing platform can easily meet ever-changing consumer demand for customized clear and colored frames. LuxCreo’s technological advantages over competitors support clear and transparent products with a cost structure to support volume production.
Light Enabled Additive Production
Simplified Workflow
Compared to SLS, LuxCreo’s advanced DLP printers significantly reduce workflow steps and post-processing. Both factors produce a more consistent, efficient manufacturing process. A typical SLS 3D printing workflow includes:
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Scan customer’s face and create a digital frame model
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3D print custom frames
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Powder cleansing
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Sanding
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Vapor smoothing
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Color dyeing
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Polishing
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Ready for lenses
LuxCreo’s DLP workflow is streamlined into five steps:
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Scan customer’s face and create a digital frame mode
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3D print custom frames
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Remove support structure
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Buffing
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Ready for lenses
LuxCreo’s printing solutions excludes time-consuming, less advanced methods to accelerate production workflow and market entry.
Design Innovation
3D printing advancements improve high-volume product customization instead of the complicated and long prototype cycles required with traditional manufacturing. 3D printing allows rapid production of highly detailed and complex functional eyewear prototypes for testing, eliminating expensive tooling and assembly costs before generating high SKU counts. The lack of tooling supports experimenting with unique aesthetic and functional design parameters and receiving micron-level accuracy on prototypes and final products. Digital face scans and advanced 3D printing provide highly-customized, well-fitting frames with a high-caliber surface finish for low and high-volume production.
Increased Durability
Standard 3D printers and materials produce eyewear with lower quality and durability than LuxCreo’s 3D printing platform. With inconsistent color dye, SLS 3D printers and nylon powder require excessive post-processing, leading to warped, fractured, or weakened frames. LuxCreo’s 3D printing technology paired with higher performance resins print precise designs with stronger mechanical properties and lasting frames for any age group.
3D Printing Solutions for Glasses Manufacturing
LuxCreo’s industrial printers support in-house and smart factory printing solutions for eyewear companies with the same level of product quality to meet volume demand easily and economically. LuxCreo’s 3D printing technology meets varying client needs and accelerates production and innovation.
Lux Series Printers: 3D glasses manufacturing introduces on-site printer options for design, prototyping, and low-volume manufacturing. In-house design and production reduce shipping costs and factory fees.
The Lux 3+ printer is a large format 3D printer offering fast and accurate printing of high-performing, durable eyewear. It’s suitable for prototyping and production and reliable for high-throughput production.
The Lux 3L+ printer is the newest industrial production 3D+ printer offering fast and accurate, high-performing, durable eyewear printing. It’s suitable for prototyping and production and reliable for high throughput production.
LuxCreo Smart Factories: LuxCreo offers easily accessible smart factory solutions with cloud-connected 3D printers. Smart factory technology gives eyewear companies on-demand scaling and production.
Eyewear manufacturers can design and print prototypes locally before connecting to a smart factory to meet large-scale volume demand. Accessing LuxCreo’s smart factory for instant 3D glasses manufacturing reduces inventory on hold and minimum order quality.
LuxCreo’s smart factory provides a more economical local manufacturing site for remote production.
Industry-Leading Materials and Software
LuxCreo’s developed proprietary resins that lead the industry with enhanced mechanical properties, including toughness, resilience, stiffness, and flexibility. Paired with LuxCreo’s advanced software, 3D printing glasses is more efficient and user-friendly.
LuxCreo’s Tough Resins: LuxCreo’s series of advanced resins provide superior part performance to other 3D printer materials like nylon.
TM 79 provides high toughness and durability with excellent low shrinkage and high impact strength. It forms components quickly with superior dimensional accuracy and minimal post-processing.
TM+82 provides high toughness and impact resistance with strong fatigue resistance and high elongation at break. It forms components quickly with excellent dimensional accuracy and detail resolution
TM+83 is LuxCreo’s latest material. It provides high toughness and impact resistance for producing functional parts that must withstand high stresses and impact.
LuxCreo’s Software: LuxCreo’s leading software supports a fast digitalized workflow for easier production.
LuxFlow consolidates the digital production workflow into six steps: Open--> Rotate tools —> Edit support structure —> Batch —> Optional Marking tools —> Slice
LuxFlow offers automatic, configurable support generation to optimize product stability.
LuxFlow provides a user-friendly interface with design tools to define various geometric specifications.