But yeah, to order the lenses, I do have to go through opticians.

That’s unfortunate. I’m trying to troubleshoot some problem that may be due to how the lens are made (or not). So having some understanding and control of that part of the process could have helped.

Firstly, are you sure those test lenses you’re using are polycarbonate?

Good question. I weighed my current frame + lens and printed frame + trial lens to pick trial lenses that match the weight. Like you, I’m execting to be lighter in the end but wanted to be on the safe side when tweaking the frames.

The trial lens are indeed glass but I’m using “plano” (0D) lenses because those match the weight. The actual lens is/will be plastic, but not polycarbonate. Its some material that’s only referred to by its index of refraction.

I’ll definitely add cable temples to the list of things to try and see what works well.

But here’s a sneak preview:

Nice! I haven’t even thought about the case yet. I was probably going to reuse an existing case but now this is giving me ideas :) Although at this point, I’m still mainly focused on solving the (medical) problem or at least gain some insight.

If you don’t intend to change the shape of your frames, the easiest is to design around old lenses you have lying around.

Indeed. Unfortunately, the main thing I want to do with 3d printing is to make frames with smaller lenses. They don’t make these other than for children and child-sized faces. So I don’t have any old glasses with lenses of that size.

Thanks for answering my questions.

The few usetul forums I found are reserved for people who work in the eyewear trade and they don’t want you to participate. I tried joining by pretending to be a professional, but they either found me out by asking where my store was, or because I asked questions that no true professional would ask.

Sounds like OptiBoard. This makes information so much harder to find! I’m glad you’ve put up stuff on GitHub and here.

I never go to the optician 🙂

I didn’t realize you worked with a lens maker directly and not through an optician. How did you even manage to do that? The labs I found via search engine needs info about whatever store I’m working for before even starting. I can’t even see the order form without, much less get price or products.

How do you get the measurement that the lens maker needs though? Like optical center and distance from pupil to lens. How did you pick the lens’ front surface (a “base curve”)?

How can you check if the lens you get back were made correctly? When something goes wrong and the optician fails to fix it, I can’t really tell what the problem is from just looking at the glasses.

If your correction doesn’t need orientation or if you’re designing non-round frames, you totally DO NOT need the registration tabs. It’s only for round, oriented lenses.

I do have cyl and axis from astigmatism but am currently making and tweaking some non-round lenses.

I’ve been putting trial lenses with no prescription in my frame to simulate the weight and when I slot those in, they don’t move at all. Its actually hard to pull the lens back out. So I’m surprised to read that superglue is sometimes used. Though I can see you don’t want errors to accumulate. I’d also want to avoid gluing them if I can.

If you design non-round lenses, they might “creak” a bit if you try to turn them forcibly and the frames don’t fit very tight around the edges. But they won’t slip.

Actually, I meant to ask whether the frames slip off your nose. That’s the problem I’m having right now. Without the simulated weight, they’re fine. But with weight, they slip off if I look down. I still have a lot of ideas of things to try to fix this but was wondering if someone else also ran into the same problem.

Finally, my glasses weigh 14 grams all told.

Very nice. If this works, I should also get lighter glasses. I actually wanted to experiment with different lens sizes. Though I think there isn’t an inexpensive way to do that.

Hey, this is really cool! I’m trying to do exactly this but am making my own frames for the first time. Is there some forum where people discuss this? For tips and common pitfalls.

You talked about the registration tab at length. I’m making mine not entirely radially symmetric. Does this mean I don’t need them? Will the lens wabble inside because its PLA?

Does the frame slip more than with other material? Or maybe with a riding bow make it not noticeable.

Was the optician able to bend the temples with heat or was no frame adjustment needed at all?

You’ve made the lens groove in this triangle shape. Is that the standard or will the tracer edger pick up any shape tehre? How’d you decide how deep to make that groove?

How comfortable do you find wearing PLA so far?