I had new progressive lenses made, but the old ones are still fine and don’t have a scratch. They’re just a bit weak at near distance, but otherwise perfectly serviceable.
So I made new frames for them because I don’t like to throw away things that work.
All assembled, the frames weigh 3.5 grams, and 14 grams with the lenses mounted.
This was printed with a Prusa Mk4 and regular PLA at 0.15 mm layer height. The hinges use simple 10x1 pins - and I worked my magic to print the holes horizontally to the final dimension with interference fit, so no reaming or drilling is necessary. These glasses are straight out of the printer with zero rework.
I think they look pretty good as they are. If anybody notices they’re 3D-printed, I’ll say I’m gunning for that particular style 🙂
The front of the frames prints in 11 minutes and both temples in 12 minutes. I could break and make a new pair every day for the rest of my life and it would still be faster and cheaper than going to Specsavers only once.
Well I could do a lot of things, but one of my hobbies is to model stuff that prints out all ready to go as much as possible. This design uses small metal hinge pins only because printed-in-place functional hinges would be huge.
But otherwise I like that it's only 3 parts that print quick, don't require any rework, and still open up to accept the lenses, orient the lenses (I have astigmatism so my lenses need to be rotated exactly right, and if you look carefully on the inside of the hinge, the V groove is interrupted to match a notch in the lens' bevel, which also contributes to lock the rim closed) and everything holds together smartly with only those two pins.
So yeah, I could do extra work to make them look nicer, but I'm kind of proud to display how I managed to make them look straight out of the printer.
Not to mention, I'm lazy too 🙂
And you know what? That’s a great design philosophy.
Simple and repeatable. Besides you don’t want to risk more expensive lenses with more breakable parts (so the metal hinges make sense)
Lazy wouldn’t have made them so I’d call it efficient use of your time.