] An MIT graduate student won the Lemelson-MIT Student
] Prize and $30,000 on Thursday for inventing a device that
] makes low-cost eyeglass lenses within 10 minutes. Saul
] Griffith, a 30-year-old doctoral candidate, also created
] electronic goggles that diagnose vision problems.
]
] Griffith, who grew up in Sydney, Australia, said that as
] a child he took apart anything he could %u2014 from
] Christmas toys to his mother's camera %u2014 to see how
] they worked.
]
]
] Saul Griffith holds an eyeglass lens made with the
] machine he invented which may allow the manufacture of
] lower-cost eyeglasses.
]
] Josh Reynolds, AP
]
]
] He tried a number of what he called "fairly crazy
] schemes" before coming up with a desktop printer-like
] device that uses liquid-filled molds to produce low-cost
] lenses quickly and cheaply.
]
] Griffith became interested the project after a Kenyan
] official told him that an eyeglass scarcity was one of
] that country's biggest problems.
]
] Mass-produced lenses are fairly cheap, but an inventory
] of thousands of lenses must be kept on hand to meet
] various vision problems. That's too expensive in some
] parts of the world.
]
] Griffith's invention uses baby oil to shape car window
] tinting film into a mold. A polymer is poured in between,
] and the lens is ready in five to 10 minutes.

Pretty cool application of technology. “Just in time” manufacturing has long fascinated me, but it seems to be better suited for small runs of a product like books or CD’s / DVD’s. Even with “thousands of prescriptions”, one finds it hard to believe acrylic lenses could not be made much cheaper (like for a few cents each) ‘en masse” using injection molds on assembly lines. Why must lenses be kept on hand in these 3’rd world areas themselves? Why not give these people vision tests, produce the prescriptions to order and ship them in? Further reduce costs by offering one style and size lens – plain round “Harry Potter / John Lennon” style (when glasses are a necessity half the world can’t afford, they are not a fashion statement). Besides, round lenses mean you can use the same lens for either eye, further reducing production and inventory costs. Once the economic model is established, it should be a simple matter of supply and demand.

With this lads system, you run into the problem of manufacturing TIME. 10 minutes per lens doesn’t sound like a lot of time, and it isn’t compared to the hand crafted lens shops that promise you glasses in about an hour. But compound it against a billion people who need glasses (that’s 2 billion lenses) and it works out to roughly 38,000 man-years. So put 10,000 of these systems in production, and you can outfit the entire world with glasses in under 4 years (of production time!) but is it really going to be cheaper than assembly lines with this kind of volume? It’s certainly not going to be faster - 2 billion units is a LOT of units.

I enjoyed the article and applaud this kid’s ability to think out of the box. I think the idea is a noble one, but it's not a sound business model.

LB

Student honored for device that makes quick, cheap eyeglass lenses