For my blue rabbit project I have decided to spend 8 weeks researching the cost and availability of custom glasses frames to the mid and lower classes as well as what it takes to three-D design and print frames without using a pre-made framework.
This idea is important because of the high cost of optical wear and the importance of functional glasses frames. If you go to a normal optometrists office to get new glasses you most likely will spend thirty minutes trying on glasses that you will wear for at least 2 years (The American Optometric Association recommends that non-senior adults and children over age 6 have regular eye exams a minimum of once every two years.) those glasses then will characterize your face for the rest of the time you wear them, and if you pay an obscene amount of money for a pair of glasses that don’t quite fit you right, you might end up not even wearing them, or paying more to find the right pair.
I have always had a hard time finding glasses that I thought I would actually wear every day, and when I have found “the one” pair they were always too expensive. Eye care is important and will degrade the more you ignore the problem, it can be frustrating when the only thing holding you back from getting the eye care you need is the high cost of frames. Buying lenses online, if you know your prescription, can be as low as 40 dollars, and if you customize your own frames (or scan in a pair that you want to print) you can cut down the cost of the frames to just the cost of materials.
Right now the monopoly on eyewear is controlled by Leonardo Del Vecchio at a net worth of 17.1 billion dollars, owner of Luxottica, which owns a slew of well-known brands such as Ray Ban, Persol, and Oakley. Luxottica also makes sunglasses branded Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Stella McCartney, Versace, Vogue, Miu Miu, Tory Burch, and Donna Karan. Leonardo is the 38th richest man in the world as of August 2014. Why must we trust this rich Italian fellow to produce all of our optical wear for us? Where else can we go?
Mykita is a berlin-based firm which has produced and patented their own process of creating three-D printed custom eye wear. In 2007 they made a polyamide-based material which uses selective laser sintering (SLS) to create a finished solid piece. With google-like ideals they call their workspace a ‘manufactory’ and have a specific vision for the aesthetic of the store. Adorned with white lights and smooth spaces each Mykita store has its own in-house optometrists who performs certified eye tests, generates customized optical profiles and adapts the frames and lenses to the wearer’s face in the store. It seems like the customized glasses seeker’s dream, right? At a whopping 400- 700$ there is a very limited amount of people who can actually afford Mykitas custom lenses.
There are many innovative techniques that are being utilized by eye wear designers, such as Tom Davies, who has been using three-D printing to print out prototype frames in store to ensure they will fit his customers’ correctly before he hand-crafts the custom frames from a more durable material such as bone. Even in Silicon Valley entrepreneurs of the web are coming up with algorithms which can use two photos (portrait and profile) of your face and create the optimal glasses frames for the shape of your face. John Mauriello and Marc Levinson along with three other co-owners created Protos, a start-up company which is now offering custom frames to people who pledge ~500$.
This raises the question, “But where does that leave me?” as a college student with limited income and the opportunity to use a maker-bot, at least I don’t have to pay the fee to have Shapeways or iMaterialise print frames for me; but it also leaves me stuck counting on Thingiverse to have the fit I need. There is really no place with the option to customize glasses to your face online without paying a large fee and just handing it over for someone else to create. This quarter I want to find/use/or create a template where you can upload pictures of yourself onto an autoCAD program and use frame templates to create and morph the frames into exactly what you are looking for. Customization without all the useless fees.
“MYKITA – ABOUT.” MYKITA. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. https://mykita.com/en/mykitahaus#
“Protos Eyewear.” Protos Eyewear. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. http://www.protoseyewear.com/
Sharma, Rakesh. “Custom Eyewear: The Next Focal Point For 3D Printing?” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 10 Sept. 2013. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/rakeshsharma/2013/09/10/custom-eyewear-the-next-focal-point-for-3d-printing/
“TD Tom Davies.” TD Tom Davies. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2014.