Single material. Customized for each client.
This looks like a good place for 3D printing to start chipping away at traditional manufacturing.
[Edit] I am talking specifically about printing the overpriced frames sold by Luxottica. Not the lenses.
This looks like a good place for 3D printing to start chipping away at traditional manufacturing.
[Edit] I am talking specifically about printing the overpriced frames sold by Luxottica. Not the lenses.
But some old washing machine parts and an Arduino can grind out any lens shape you might need from a printed blank. Building a garage lens grinder using a volume printer wouldn't be any more complicated than replicating a RepRap.
You really could make a pair of glasses from one type of plastic. If you need the temple pieces to fold (if it even has temple pieces), the same hinge design used by whittlers to make pliers from a single piece of wood would suffice, and could probably be cut with a laser of the correct wavelength.
Eyeglass frames can be described adequately by overall width and length of the temple pieces. One machine can produce several similar styles of frame in all the most common sizes before you can blink. If they don't have a brand name on them, frames are dirt cheap.
The lenses are the unique element. If you're not including either the lenses or the unique shape of someone's face in the printing process, there's just no point in doing that instead of going to Costco or Walmart for a frame.
Or you could create a style so alien to current styles that it could not be produced with current mass production machinery. Perhaps it secures the lenses with nose and eyebrow piercings, or a hatband-like ring around the entire head, or a pince-nez style that puts silicone hooks over your nostrils.
The lenses are still the majority of the effort.
Actually, I'm not. I'm talking about printing frames as opposed to buying them from Luxottica.
Consumers do not get a break. At LensCrafters, the average cost for a pair of frames and lenses is about $300. You may think -- well, there's choice in the mall for other glasses. But Luxottica doesn't only own the top eyewear chain in the country, it owns another large chain: Pearle Vision, and Oliver Peoples, and several boutique chains. And it runs Target Optical and Sears Optical. And we're not done, Luxottica also owns Sunglass Hut - the largest sunglass chain in the world.
The cost of frames is not based on the cost of traditional manufacturing. Luxottica controls the market, like De Beers and the diamond market.