HANDS ON - Eye On Equipment
Movin' on Up
by Susan P. Tarrant

Let's face it—no piece of equipment lasts forever. Eventually, breakdowns occur, causing downtime and service calls. Retail edgers have a lifespan of anywhere from four years to more than 10, depending on the quality of the equipment.

So how does one know when the end is near? Simple: Look at your repair log and the downtime that your office has suffered.

That means service calls, down time, and service bills. And, it could become increasingly harder to find someone who knows the inner workings of "vintage" machines.

RECOUPING EFFICIENCY

The latest generation of edging systems boasts many benefits, not the least of which is ease of use and time savings. They are faster, do more tasks, and are easy to operate. Achieving greater efficiencies of labor is in itself a reason to consider upgrading your equipment.

"Investing in a new, multi-tasking edger is going to increase the functionality of the office," says Thomas Fefer, ABOC, FNAO, western U.S. sales manager for Santinelli International.

Older equipment requires a lot of involvement on the part of the operator. Upgrading to newer, easier-to-use equipment allows the office more flexibility regarding who has to be on staff to run the equipment.

Gone is downtime when the operator is sick or on vacation; gone is the need to even have a designated equipment operator on staff.

An upgrade affords an office the ability to have several people trained on the equipment.

Because newer equipment is so much faster and time efficient, a staffer can spend part of his/her time on the edger and the rest of the time on the dispensary floor and with patients. Simply put, a multi-tasking edging system makes room for multi-tasking employees.

"If an ECP invests more in his equipment, the less he has to invest in his people," explains Tyrone Johns, sales representative for Gerber Coburn.

INTO THE FUTURE

Upgrading existing equipment can be done without buying a whole new machine. Software upgrades can make the motors faster; new wheels can allow you to edge additional lens materials. But those improvements will get you through today, not set you up for tomorrow.

"If you're going to continue doing just plastic and poly and nothing else special, then you might get by with your old edger," says Bret Davis, president of Briot-Weco USA. "But if you want to be selling a lot of drill mounts and Trivex and high index and all of the new stuff that's out there, you'd better have an edger that can handle it."

Indeed, upgrading to a new edger gives ECPs the ability to sell the types of jobs that are moving the much of the market now—small eyesizes, drill mounts, high index, and new materials. And, it keeps them in-house instead of out to labs.

An upgrade to the newest generation of edging systems can offer an ECP pin beveling, drilling, remote tracing, and small B measurements.

Upgrading to a new edger with all the bells and whistles doesn't even have to mean a huge investment. Much of the new generation of equipment comes equipped with the capability for future expansion—meaning you'll have the ability to incorporate other features in a year or two as your business grows.

By not upgrading, Johns says, "you're limiting yourself regarding what your can offer your customers, now and in the future If you're
buying your edger for today, you're buying the wrong edger."