Eyeglass Lens Molding Line

The team designed and constructed a class 1000 cleanroom system that consisted of eight different process stations used in conjunction with a rotary Automated Storage & Retrieval System (ASRS). The goal was to provide a system where a lens could be manufactured per a customer’s specific prescription. To accomplish this, two glass molds for the front and base curves of each lens were stored in four rotary ASRS units. The ASRS design allowed for 4,500 molds to be stored in the system, which could be randomly combined to produce over 45,000 different lens prescriptions. The glass molds were retrieved based on specific parameters input from an Internet interface and downloaded into a lens recipe. Upon receipt of the recipe the glass molds were placed on a pallet, then pressed into a mold ring where they were held in place. The glass molds were presented to a process station where a liquid monomer was introduced into the mold gap then subsequently cured into polymer using UV light.