LUXeXcel, the Dutch company known for its awarded printoptical technology – and has also been featured here on 3DPI for their collaboration with the academic world – has now showed that the advanced tech they are using might be worthy even for the blue-blooded elite. The newly appointed King and Queen of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Willem Alexander and Maxima, were shown the quite amazing fruit of LUXeXcel’s recent printoptical labour – functional lenses and frames, which were manufactured in a single 3D printing session.
Even though the publicity is pretty much guaranteed with an effort to have a royal reference to show off with, the tech alone is something that is very intriguing and something to keep an eye on in the future. The process doesn’t just create glasses for the fashion oriented consumer with 20/20 vision, but enables manufacturing of prescription corrective lenses, in addition to the various possibilities 3DP tech gives in the design process of the frames.
However, as with so many other 3DP related innovations, even though the tech itself is there, it’s not actually ready for the consumer market just yet. It all comes down to the now familiar issues — costs regarding the process, materials, machinery and time, but the promise is definitely there. The particular glasses showcased to they Royal family were moved to the EU Digital Industrial Manufacturing platform Diginova, where they’ll continue their life as one bright example of 3D printing’s possibilities.
Source: LUXeXcel
