Free-Form: From Here to Where?
The free-form production and products arena is changing. What's happening and where's this market going? This is your guide to understanding free-form developments and what they mean to your practice and profits
KARLEN MCLEAN, ABOC, NCLC
The outlook for free-form generation seems unlimited right now. Image courtesy of Essilor
Free-form, digital surfacing, digital vision, high-definition vision, wavefront—these are some of the monikers that digitized or customized lens production goes by. No matter what you call the process, developments in free-form production are fast and furious and, if anything, will increase as the industry continues to pursue the goal of the majority of lenses being produced in free-form format.
Remember the early days of plastic lenses, of polycarbonate lenses, progressive lenses, and anti-reflective lenses? Those frontiers were wild, and the free-form frontier may be the wildest yet. One thing's for certain; free-form from these days on will continue to evolve and improve at a rapid pace. Here's what's happening right now and what to expect in the future.
PROGRESSIVE ADDITION LENSES
Free-form PALs seem to be sectioning into three categories:
1.Value free-form with all backside classic design;
2. Mid-tier free-form with designs utilizing compensated power and unique measurements, and;
3. High-end free-form, with features of mid-tier designs and also with customized insets, meaning that wearers have an "unlimited optical center" and vision is crisp throughout the entire lens.
Free-form appeals to pro-customization boomers. Image courtesy of Seiko
More free-form-created PAL products than ever have launched over the last year, and lines will continue to launch and upgrade. Today, free-form technology can dynamically adjust a PAL lens design to the frame and patient wearing habits, including corridor lengths that grow and shrink, while still providing a full reading area and a significant percentage increase in intermediate field of view. In other words: an unlimited number of corridors.
Other PAL designs offer corridors that can be hard, soft, or blended according to patient wearing habits. Insets can be moved to broaden the field of view—for example, up to 35 percent with high add powers in a high-plus lens, typically a tough PAL Rx category. In the near future, insets will be able to be fully customized.
In some cases, more specific measurements than a pupillary distance and optical center need to be taken with free-form lenses, as the lens design changes with frame design.
Pantoscopic and retroscopic angles must be done prior to taking measurements. Also, some companies require additional specific measurements taken with proprietary equipment.
Usage and environment come into play as well, requiring targeted questions to patients to obtain details of how and where they use their lenses. Knowing how patients use their lenses on a day-to-day basis, and in what environments they need them for, plus how they hold their head during various activities and where they look out of the lenses, requires dispensing and measurement detail work.
Dispensing questions are also an opportunity to professionally bring patients into the realization that one pair of lenses can't do it all for them. They may require everyday free-form PALs for most of their wearing time, an office-specific free-form PAL for work, and a sports-centric PAL for play.
| UPWARD Numbers |
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| Some free-form business stats can help you "figure out" practice goals in the free-form arena. 2 to 5 years: Fast-paced, free-form evolution predicted by industry experts. 50%: The percentage of free-form business that at least one major lens manufacturer is aiming for within five years. 60%: The percentage of free-form lenses currently dispensed in Japan. 65%: The percentage of all preschoolers today who will work in careers that don't exist yet, says Jim Carroll, a futurist, trends, and innovation expert. Lenses are evolving in ways we can't envision, too. 9 out of 10 and 99%: Two separate study results that confirm faster adaptation or immediate adaptation to free-form PALs. 1.67 like 1.74: Single-vision free-form lens technology being launched in the near future that achieves lens thickness in a 1.67 the same as a 1.74 lens. |
SINGLE-VISION
Single-vision free-form-produced lenses, like free-form PALs, can be standard or optimized. Several single-vision free-form lenses require specific and additional measurements from ECPs and are typically fitted and measured like a PAL. Free-form-designed single-vision and PALs, whether optimized or not, help reduce the "visual noise" that wearers—especially, but not only, those with high-power prescriptions—experience.
Benefits of free-form-created single-vision lenses include undistorted visual fields with edge-to-edge clarity. Bi-aspheric single-vision free-form lenses are currently on the market and offer visual optimization for all powers.
Imagine that the entire lens is optically centered, meaning it has edge-to-edge clarity with no distortions, no matter how large or wrapped the frame is. Single-vision lenses with an aspheric front, free-form and aspheric/atoric design on the back, are coming soon that will dramatically thin lenses plus expand vision in all directions.
SUNLENSES
Single-vision free-form-created sunlenses can be fitted, measured, and processed like a PAL, so the line of sight is extremely accurate. Some companies utilize special measuring equipment in ECPs' offices to ensure unwanted aberrations are virtually eliminated. Other companies use a more standard fitting and measuring process.
Single-vision and PAL free-form sunlenses can be customized to the way each patient sees when participating in their sport—considering visual requirements and, in some cases, customized tints with polarization and AR. Typically, free-form-created sports lenses offer a large distance field of view along with adaptability to small, large, and wrap frames.
Sport-specific free-form lenses help patients see and perform their visual best at their desired sport. This is accomplished using free-form processing along with customized designs that consider the frame vertex distance and pantoscopic angle, frame size and shape, and other traditional measurements along with per-patient, per-eye customization.
Free-form options are expanding. Image courtesy of KbCo The Polarized Lens Company
ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING
Free-form processing is efficient and effective, basically allowing manufacturers and labs to make anything using semi-finished lenses. Keep in mind, however, that the final lens product is only as good as the lens design. That's why free-form designers are constantly updating the software that is capable of running the most advanced and usable free-form designs.
| Free-form BIZ |
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| What's happening behind the free-form scenes today that will better the way you do free-form business tomorrow? 1 More manufacturers partnering with more labs means faster turnaround on free-form work. Some manufacturers are predicting two-day turnover. 2 Already strong in the European optical market, overseas manufacturing is creating low prices on free-form products due to "mega labs" with cheap labor and automated "lights out" manufacturing. This trend is migrating to North America. Look for lower pricing on proprietary free-form-produced lenses from new companies, and price-and-features tiered name brand free-form products as well. 3 Overseas competition may split the free-form logistics model. At least one manufacturer predicts that it may come to a choice: value product where faster service is the key and premium product where quality and service are paramount. 4 Customization is the future free-form theme. It goes with societal trends, appealing to wearing habits and preferences. Designs will evolve to appeal to everyone. For example, some patients like a hard PAL design, while others prefer a soft design. Many patients like the flexibility that free-form offers and can greatly benefit from more comfortable, crisper vision. 5 ECP education on free-form, from basic to advanced and product-specific, will be an ongoing process for years to come as the technology and products continue to evolve. Hands-on training is essential to ensure the entire scope of the industry maintains quality control and outputs a precise product. 6 Free-form promotions will become more aggressive to labs, ECPs, and consumers. Several companies will offer ramped-up, creative incentives. 7 Free-form-produced lens families will proliferate. We're already seeing free-form lens lines or "families" which include various PAL designs (typically value, mid-range, and high-end), and some wrap and polarized designs. Single-vision and other sunlenses are just beginning to be added to these families. As free-form families grow, watch for optimized designs in each category with several design developments launched at once; for example, new or improved PAL, single-vision, and sunlenses all launched together. 8 Free-form is no longer a niche market. Four out of five major U.S. retail optical chains now sell free-form products. Reports indicate that free-form is growing rapidly in Japan, Europe, Mexico, and Canada. Within the past few months, five new digital labs were implemented in Canada alone. |
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Free-form is expanding visual clarity. Images courtesy of Shamir (top) and Rodenstock (left) |
Three Rivers Optical in Pittsburgh, Pa., a lab that adopted free-form processing early on and continues to add advances to its free-form processing line and designs, advocates the flexibility of free-form to do anything and do it well.
"Digital surfacing allows us to develop unique products," says Three Rivers president Steve Seibert. "It's accurate to 100th of a diopter and is available in any lens style. If you can dream it, we can create it."
Free-form production has the ability to produce non-typical (special order) lenses as well as enhanced visual and cosmetically pleasing high-power Rx lenses, plus improve the optics and performance on the everyday stuff. Free-form is flexible.
"Inventory is virtually unlimited and designs can be changed relatively quickly," explains Craig Giles, vice president and general manager of Soderberg Ophthalmic Services in St. Paul, Minn.
Pech Optical Corp., based in Sioux City, Iowa, another early lab innovator in free-form production, sees a big future for free-form.
"We believe free-form will replace conventional PALs in the future," says Kathryn Gross-Edelman, Pech's director of education.
ECP POWER
Customized free-form offers ECPs a set of lens parameters that can be altered for the best vision possible. How powerful to be able to say confidently to patients: "We can design this lens just for you."
For ECPs and patients, it is changing the way lens design is perceived. Keep your messages clear and clean with a unique twist. Instead of a long explanation of what free-form-created lenses can do for them, simply tell your patients that they'll have the best possible visual experience via technology that designs lenses just for them.
If more details are required, focus on free-form benefits: optimized lens performance, high quality and visual acuity, personalized lenses with unique-to-you vision, relief of eye strain, and easy adaptation.
LAB POWER
Maintaining equipment, tools, and fluids is crucial to free-form output and quality demands. Coolant is particularly important, as it protects machinery from corrosion and bacterial and fungal growth. Lubricant in the coolant helps tools achieve a longer, more useful life. Coolant also helps move and pump waste faster and more efficiently. A preventive maintenance program should include a daily walk-through checklist as well as weekly, monthly, and yearly to-do lists and performance goals.
With more automation, free-form and continuous-line processing, labs are matching the talent pool to new lab needs. While people are still needed to feed equipment, the new "lab rat" is a maintenance person to a technician, maybe someone with an electronics degree or experience. As one industry vet said at Satisloh's recent Slugfest event: "Labs need to take on the culture of an Rx manufacturer rather than a job shop."
The processing market is expanding. Smaller, more affordable free-form equipment is already in development and will launch in the near future, allowing small- to mid-size labs and retailers to offer free-form processing on-site. EB
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