Fluidic Approach to Corrective Eyewear Manufacturing in Low-Resource Settings

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Elgarisi, Mor, Luria, Omer, Katzman, Yotam, Widerker, Daniel, Frumkin, Valeri, Bercovici, Moran
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Elgarisi, Mor
Luria, Omer
Katzman, Yotam
Widerker, Daniel
Frumkin, Valeri
Bercovici, Moran
author_facet Elgarisi, Mor
Luria, Omer
Katzman, Yotam
Widerker, Daniel
Frumkin, Valeri
Bercovici, Moran
contents Limited access to corrective eyewear remains a significant medical, societal, and economic challenge, even in the 21st century. More than 1 billion people suffer from uncorrected vision impairment, with the vast majority residing in developing countries. Decades of philanthropic efforts failed to supply even a small fraction of the demand, whereas local manufacturing using standard machining technologies remains out of reach due to inadequate resources. We here show that the Fluidic Shaping approach can be utilized to create a new manufacturing modality for high-quality ophthalmic lenses that entirely eliminates the need for machining, and instead uses surface tension to shape liquid polymer volumes into prescription lenses. We present a compact device wherein a liquid photopolymer is injected into an elliptical frame submerged within an immersion liquid of equal density, resulting in two liquid surfaces whose minimum-energy states correspond to two lens surfaces. After several minutes of curing, a complete solid lens is obtained, requiring no post-processing. We provide an analytical model and experimental validation, showing that all spherical and cylindrical corrections can be attained by simply controlling the volume of the polymer and the frame's eccentricity. We demonstrate the fabrication of complete eyeglasses that meet and exceed industry standards, relying solely on a 1 gallon water container integrated with an array of low-power LEDs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_10067
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Fluidic Approach to Corrective Eyewear Manufacturing in Low-Resource Settings
Elgarisi, Mor
Luria, Omer
Katzman, Yotam
Widerker, Daniel
Frumkin, Valeri
Bercovici, Moran
Applied Physics
Optics
Limited access to corrective eyewear remains a significant medical, societal, and economic challenge, even in the 21st century. More than 1 billion people suffer from uncorrected vision impairment, with the vast majority residing in developing countries. Decades of philanthropic efforts failed to supply even a small fraction of the demand, whereas local manufacturing using standard machining technologies remains out of reach due to inadequate resources. We here show that the Fluidic Shaping approach can be utilized to create a new manufacturing modality for high-quality ophthalmic lenses that entirely eliminates the need for machining, and instead uses surface tension to shape liquid polymer volumes into prescription lenses. We present a compact device wherein a liquid photopolymer is injected into an elliptical frame submerged within an immersion liquid of equal density, resulting in two liquid surfaces whose minimum-energy states correspond to two lens surfaces. After several minutes of curing, a complete solid lens is obtained, requiring no post-processing. We provide an analytical model and experimental validation, showing that all spherical and cylindrical corrections can be attained by simply controlling the volume of the polymer and the frame's eccentricity. We demonstrate the fabrication of complete eyeglasses that meet and exceed industry standards, relying solely on a 1 gallon water container integrated with an array of low-power LEDs.
title Fluidic Approach to Corrective Eyewear Manufacturing in Low-Resource Settings
topic Applied Physics
Optics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.10067