Comment on My personal benchy: this one really tests a printer's capabilities

• ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  tweak and reprint the frame a bit to match the lenses. That’s not really the end of the world, but I don’t count on any opticians to understand that

  Oh believe me, they understand perfectly.

  Here’s the thing - and I’m not inventing this: my current optician is a friend and she told me this verbatim: an optician’s bread and butter is selling you frames, and the services around fitting the lenses on the frame and fitting the frame on you. Opticians make almost no money on the lenses - which they have made abroad in developing countries usually.

  I don’t deny that there’s a lot of measuring prior to ordering lenses, counselling the customer, and then a lot of fiddling with the temples and the nose pads after the glasses are completed to make sure the glasses are comfortable and yada-yada. The services provided by opticians are definitely useful, particularly for young wearers and for people who change frames often.

  But really, if you’re a lifelong glasses wearer, you’re reasonably handy and you settle on one frame geometry, those measurements never change and you just don’t need the services.

  Me, the last time I needed an optician’s services was over 20 years ago when I made my first frames out of nickel silver. Since then, I’ve only made copies of those exact frames because I really like them - including those 3D-printed ones I drew a few weeks ago: they’re a bit different to account for the nature of the 3D-printing process, but the key measurements are the same.

  So whenever I go to an optician to order new lenses - which you almost have to because you can’t order the lenses direct, even if you have all the measurements needed by the lens maker, the convo always goes something like this:

  • Hello, I need a pair of lenses with these dimension (or for these frames), with this prescription. My pupillary distance is x, the vertical angle is y, the bevel is z all around and the optical axis is marked here. I don’t want you to mount the lenses on the frames and I don’t want you to fit me. How much and when?
  • Well okay, the lenses are $something. But since you don’t buy frames from us, we’ll have to charge you an extra $something.

  I kid you not, it’s extortion. They hate it when you can do their job yourself so they charge you for the privilege. And since you don’t have access to their suppliers (they look out for each other) you have to go through them.

  source