Italian machinery producer MEI System has released the RacerTBA ophthalmic lens edging unit.
The RacerTBA was described as a significant in lens edging because it combines the throw the block away (TBA) inspection style process and an edging system in one single unit with an industrial design that makes it extremely compact.
The unit performs two specific operations - lens loading and inspection, and edging. Through the use of an indexed rotating table with four positions for each side, the two operations are carried out simultaneously, allowing it to process eight lenses at the same time – something which MEI Systems said made it the fastest edging machine on the market. First productivity tests showed that the machine can process approximately 150 lenses per hour, the equivalent of 1,200 lenses per eight hour shift.
Although designed for large-scale production, the lens edging side of the unit has six spindles and six tools for flexible processing. Functions include: vertical and inclined bevel, flat edge, grooving, drilling (as well as non-through drilling), polishing (flat and bevel edge), square bevel (T), step back on bevel, groove and chamfer.
Significant reduction in production costs were said to be one of the device’s most prominent benefits. Expense derived from eliminating the blocks, adhesives and protective films used in traditional grinding are eliminated, as is time spent inspecting lens quality, as this is built into the machine.
The RacerTBA builds on the MEI BispheraTBA unit not just in its increased productivity, but in the evolution of the TBA lens orientation system. The version used the new RacerTBA carries out full quality inspection on all lenses (single vision, progressive, bifocal, gradient tinted, polarized, etc.) by means of a new mobile lensmeter integrated into the control process and thickness detection. The precision of power checks is 0.03 diopters for single vision lenses and 0.05 diopters for progressives. With this unit, preliminary inspection of lenses to be edged are no longer needed (whether stock or prescription lenses): once the lenses have been positioned inside the trays, the unit performs all the processes automatically, producing inspected and edged lenses.