At SILMO PARIS, Materialise will introduce 3D printed eyewear that includes an revolutionary translucent materials. This addition to Materialise’s portfolio permits eyewear producers to merge the design benefits of 3D printing with client demand for translucent eyewear collections. The introduction of this distinctive materials, 3D printable by way of a photopolymerization course of, opens the door to visually compelling collections that can form the way forward for eyewear vogue.

3D printing holds a number of benefits for manufacturing eyewear, together with shorter growth cycles, sooner routes to market, and sustainable credentials. It additionally permits designers to experiment with kind — providing the flexibility to play with complicated shapes, intricate buildings, and textures which might be inconceivable to copy with conventional manufacturing strategies. Over the past decade, this has led to the widespread adoption of 3D printed eyewear throughout the trade.

The hunt for readability in 3D printed eyewear

As eyewear producers embraced 3D printing for its distinctive design capabilities, they typically encountered a sensible limitation: the expertise couldn’t replicate the translucent aesthetics historically related to acetate frames. The introduction of a brand new translucent materials marks a breakthrough. It empowers eyewear manufacturers to mix translucency with the unequalled design flexibility of 3D printing, permitting designers to maneuver past what is feasible with acetate.

The brand new translucent materials is the results of 5 years of intensive trialing of over fifty completely different supplies towards the gold customary of established eyewear supplies, together with exams for bio-compatibility, thermal resilience, and affect resistance.

“The convergence of 3D printing expertise with the appearance of revolutionary translucent supplies opens up a realm of exhilarating design prospects for eyewear designers,” mentioned Alireza Parandian, Head of World Enterprise Technique, Wearables at Materialise. “Previously decade, 3D printing has launched a brand new stage of freedom that gives designers limitless creativity to craft intricate and customised frames. Shifting ahead, the introduction of translucent supplies to the 3D printing palette will convey a brand new dimension to eyewear aesthetics. These supplies, with their ethereal qualities, rework eyeglass frames into artistic endeavors, providing a novel interaction of complexity and depth.”

This marriage of expertise and materials innovation guarantees to redefine the way forward for eyewear design, providing designers a various array of recent choices to reinforce each their imaginative and prescient and elegance. Materialise calls upon designers to experiment with the opportunity of charming shapes, gradients, textures, and light-weight buildings, all whereas sustaining the timeless enchantment of translucent frames.

Enabling the ‘on-line to in-store’ shift

Translucent frames usually are not the one eyewear pattern mirrored in options Materialise will take to SILMO. Shopper preferences are transferring from remoted on-line buying to in-store, personalised experiences — a shift enabled by digital applied sciences like Materialise’s ‘Eyewear Becoming Suite.’

Eyewear customers more and more need custom-made merchandise and buying experiences. The truth is, customization is without doubt one of the key drivers recognized for the worldwide eyewear market to realize a CAGR of 8.5% by 2030. With prescription eyewear accounting for an estimated 63% of the market, this implies retailers and opticians that customise their companies and finish merchandise stand to realize a aggressive edge.

Materialise’s Eyewear Becoming Suite permits opticians to take an in depth scan of a buyer’s face to construct an actual 3D digital mannequin. The platform’s app, which may be loaded with retailer’s personal collections and with these of collaborating manufacturers, then permits the shopper and optician to take a look at shapes, types, colours, and dimension choices collectively, leveraging each skilled experience and digital innovation to pick out the right, custom-fit body.

Parandian mentioned: “AI and different digital CX instruments are more and more commonplace on-line. However not in-store. And that’s nonetheless the place so many purchasers are heading to get that one-to-one skilled assist. Nonetheless, round 1 in 4 clients who enter a store trying to buy new eyewear abandon their search as a result of they’re both overwhelmed by selection or can’t discover the precise body to swimsuit their facial options. Our Eyewear Becoming Suite provides clients a greater understanding of which frames completely match their particular face dimension, contours, and options and creates a brand new in-store buying expertise looking for the right body.”

In addition to answering client wants, the platform means retailers can supply an omnichannel buying journey and preserve digital stock for on-demand manufacturing — minimizing expensive inventory danger and potential body wastage, subsequently supporting extra sustainable operations. Moreover, as printing is fulfilled at Materialise’s devoted eyewear manufacturing facility, the biggest of its type in Europe, this frees up advisors and opticians to focus totally on the shopper.