SINGULUS TECHNOLOGIES AG, the world's largest manufacturer of inline production equipment for optical storage discs, forges ahead with its expansion program into the optical coatings market and presents a new inline coating system for eyeglass lenses. Through close cooperation with a key customer, Rupp+Hubrach, the OPTICUS machine was developed to automate ophthalmic coating process technology (hard coat, anti-reflective (AR) coating and hydrophobic coat) and include all process steps in one inline production cycle - lens by lens. The fully-automated production of prescription eyeglass lenses has now become possible and will substantially reduce production costs and cycle times.
Because conventional machines and processes, particularly single batch recipe manufacturing, have never been able to integrate the required hard- and AR-coatings in an inline process or completely automate the refinement of plastic eyeglass lenses, the search for a simpler and more cost effective solution has lasted years.
By employing the patented SINGULUS know-how, the application of hard- or AR-coatings onto both sides of plastic lenses can occur simultaneously and is fully automated.
This results in significantly reduced error rates and shorter order throughput times for eyeglass manufactures, enabling opticians to fill customer orders faster than ever before. The ability to control the coating plasma through exact dosing and defined magnetic fields is the core SINGULUS technology that provides a very uniform deposition of the layer coating onto the curved surface of a lens.