troubleshooting tips

Edger Etiquette

Karlen McLean, ABOC, NCLC

To ensure your in-office edger is more than a place for your coffee cup, it's important to know the details of each maintenance task and to be able to troubleshoot problems.

Here, our lab experts share their expertise on what protocols to follow, and tips and tricks from the trade.

Q What edger maintenance items are on your checklist and how often do you perform them?

A We primarily run dry-cut edgers, and maintenance isn't the same as a coolant-fed diamond wheel edger. Each machine is vacuumed out daily to ensure that the carriages are swarf-free.

The cutter blades are replaced every 300 to 350 cuts, which usually translates to every two to three days. Upon changing the cutter, we then calibrate size. Bevel and axis should be checked once a week and calibrated if necessary.

As with dry-cut edgers, a thorough cleaning of the edging chamber on wet-cut edgers is one of the best things you can do. We usually do this at the end of the day. When we're finished with the cleaning, we apply Armor All to all rubber parts, which seems to help with the life of the rubber since it's often in contact with liquid. Size calibrations should be done about every 1,000 lenses or so. Bevel calibrations can be done as needed and sometimes can be taken care of by a light dressing of the bevel wheel.

Calibrate axis once a week—most of the newer edgers make all of these processes quick and easy, so you may choose to calibrate size, bevel, and axis once a day. As far as I know, you can't overcalibrate, although it's been our experience that the bevel and axis calibration hold for a substantial period of time.

— Chris Parker, president, Optiks Unlimited, Inc., Orlando, Fla.

Q What is the most common edger problem and how do you fix it?

A Our most common edging dilemma is lenses twisting during processing, usually on high-minus AR coated lenses.

Our solution is to use new chucking pads and to repress the block just prior to edging. Depending on edge thickness, we actually hold the edger's chucking assembly by hand to slow the material roughing time. One or all of these solutions usually produces success.

— Bob Smiley, bench manager, Katz … Klein, Inc., Sacramento, Calif.