Events
Guangzhou International Optics Fair
Nov
The 2018 Guangzhou Optical Fair took place from 3rd November to 5th November. We’re honoured to receive invitation from the organiser to visit the fair. We’d like to thank them for taking care of our transportation and accommodation. It was indeed an eye opening event.
We thought it’d be interesting to share with you some of the highlights of the exhibition. After all, it’s always good to know the manufacturing side of glasses and what’s the latest tech in optical industry. As consumer, the more you know, you become more aware when it comes to buying glasses.
Here are the 5 highlights of the exhibition :
1. Acetate, the main material of eyewear frame
Many think that eyewear frame is made of “plastic”. It’s actually not the case. To be fair, frames are made of few materials i.e ultem, TR, stainless steel, specialised alloy, aluminium and acetate. Different material has unique characteristics. Some are sturdy, some are ultralight while some are flexible.
The material that we’d like to cover here is called acetate. It’s basically a cellulose based material that is allergic free. That is why many eyewear brands love this. In the photo below, you see how acetate supplier display the material to ease us in selecting the material for our eyewear frame.
You can see the beauty of acetate lies in its unique fine pattern and vibrant color. Since it’s made of melted cellulose, the color and pattern will stay and do not fade easily. Even after years of wearing, the frame requires minor polishing to restore its beauty.
2. Better insights for computer lens
Computer lens, also known as anti blue light lens has gained popularity these few years. From the first version which is extremely yellow to what we have today, mild yellowish based, we can see that the demand plays an important role in pushing the innovation forward. In the exhibition, we see multiple lens manufacturers come out with latest anti blue light lens, some with no blue refection, while some can cut blue light higher than the usual range.
We sat in a talk on this topic. The talk is about the data and research gathered over the years from consumers on the effect of wearing anti blue light lens. One of the more important slide is what you see here.
Basically it shows that although computer lens claim to protect the eyes, wearers feel even more tired after wearing. Besides, due to the yellowish based, the object lose its natural color. To get the best effect of anti blue light lens, the speaker shared 3 points.
- Make sure that the lens is not yellowish that wearer cannot accept
- Make sure that anti blue lens really cut of the harmful range, and not the non harmful range
- Never overuse the eyes after wearing the anti blue light lens
3. Interesting prescription lens manufacturing
There are many ways of many prescription lens. This one is quite interesting to us because we witnessed the process of making a prescription lens from scratch in less than 15 mins.
Step 1 : inject liquid into the mould.
Step 2 : place the mould filled with liquid on a conveyor belt and pass through a UV light. It gets hardened here.
Step 3 : Dry it with multiple fans, and the process is complete!
It’s actually not as simple because there are lots of calculation before hand to calculate the curvature and abbreviation. It also requires precision in the process. Nonetheless, it’s really satisfying to watch.
4. Eyewear frame making process
Ever wonder how the frames are made? Here are some sneak peek.
What we see here are a lot of polishing work.
This for instance is polishing the nosepad. We did not manage to capture clear video because some equipments are too high and huge to capture the entire process. Let us know if you want to know more, we’re happy to share.
Conclusion
Exhibition like this provides a lot of insights to us. We see what latest trend is and what latest technologies are there. Knowing all these help us to be more aware of what’s happening in optical industry and also know what are the best thing we can provide to our customers.
