Titanium Eyeglass Frames

"Roger Shoaf" wrote: (clip) Countless times my eyeglass lenses have been hit with grinding sparks that would have killed plastic, (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ My optometrist advised me otherwise, and my experience says he was right. Grinding and welding sparks imbed themselved in glass, but bounce right off of plastic.

Glass melts at a much higher temperature than the plastic that they make lenses from. As I have no imbedded anything in my glass lenses I fail to see how your optician concludes this. The polycarbonate does have a higher impact resistance, but as far as scratches and pits go, I am not convinced.

In article , Larry Jaques wrote: :On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 04:51:27 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, :Richard Kanarek quickly quoth: : :>Greetings, :>

:>For what it's worth: :>

Worked fine for me with Firefox running on Linux.

The local BBB chapters are funded by their local business members, so if Zenni isn't a member and you ask the BBB about them I wouldn't expect them to get any sort of a glowing review. They might even go as far as to make something vaguely sinister up, if they think it's vague enough as not to be actionable for libel.

After typing that first paragraph I went and read the site link that you reference, and as I suspected a lot of that wishy-washy "No Response" nonsense can probably be written off as "Why the hell should we 'respond' to you when the first thing you want to do before you'll clean up all those ambiguously bad references and give us a glowing reference when asked is to bill us for a membership we neither want or need?"

Follow The Money. And not surprisingly, they don't have a "Dues Rates" schedule in their pages, just a "Contact Us" form.

If it was inexpensive, I'm sure they would list it - instead they have the platitude "Your Reputation Is Priceless. It's wise to economize. But not when your reputation is at stake. Your association with the Better Business Bureau is priceless..." And that voice went off in my head going "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!" This kind of blatant extortion cheeses me off...

(Don't hold back, tell us what you really think...)

There's an interesting sentence in there "BBB Members are notified immediately if there is a complaint filed against them..." Gee, I wonder if those complaints that are listed as "Not Resolved" are ones where Zenni was never notified there was a problem, because they aren't a member - ergo even if the customer contacted Zenni directly and the problem was resolved, they have no way to get the BBB to mark them off on the BBB Listing as "Resolved". Hmmm...

You can call me paranoid, you can call me a cab... ;-P But this is the same kind of (crud) that Consumer Reports Magazine has had to put up with in the past - several outfits have been started up with a deliberately similar name (Consumer Review was one, IIRC) and they were shaking down potential reviewees for advertising placements and sponsorships, Free Samples for review, etc. If they didn't pay and/or fork over the Swag for review, the product got panned.

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There is more than one kind of plastic used in eyeglass lenses:

Polycarbonate is sold for its shatter resistance, but is quite soft, melts easily, and is vulnerable to common solvents. I can see why glass would be better than polycarbonate, although hot-enough sparks will nonetheless weld to glass.

The original material for plastic lenses is called CR-39, which is quite hard, insoluable in common solvents, and does not melt (so sparks won't stick).

I used to be a glass-only fellow, always buying the industrial-hard lenses even for streetwear. Never had a lens break, although one set ended up with little blobs of copper welded to the front (shorted a pair of subpanel busbars together with #14, which vanished). But the lenses were very heavy.

So I decided to switch to plastic, and ended up with CR-39 lenses, which are at least as shatterproof as the old industrial hard glass lenses I used to use, and the edges of broken CR-39 are not sharp. Polycarbonate was rejected more or less immediately, as it wouldn't survive a week with me and my shop. Nor would it long survive ordinary lens cleaning.

I'm into my third set of CR-39 lenses, and have had no problems, although the antireflection coatings do get patchy after a while. I get the full anti-scratch plus antireflection coating package, on both sides. The real purpose of the antiscratch coating is to better tolerate daily cleaning.

A history of plastic eyeglass lenses: .

Joe Gwinn

I have recvieved more than once a message on my answering machine from the BBB that implied that someone had called them inquiring and/or complaining about my business. However, when I called them about the message they told me, after I insisted, that they had not recieved any calls about my business at all. And they got real nasty when I said that they were not to call me again. They still called me though a year later. And whenever I have called the BBB about a business that listed themselves as a BBB member I always had to leave a message or write a letter, there has never been someone actually answer the phone. So I came to realize that the way the BBB operates in my area at least is just a scam. ERS

If they work for you Joe that is great, but after one pair only lasted 3 days I gave up on the plastic.

On 21 Feb 2007 11:03:03 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, snipped-for-privacy@panix.com (Al Dykes) quickly quoth:

I couldn't get any content to come up with FF2, and I shut it down and tried again to no avail. I clicked on the Search button and it redrew the screen with nothing below it. It came right up in Exploder. Whatever.

(chuckle).... I *do* have obligations, ya know.... :) Ken.

Thanks for all the great responses and links.... I am going to check these out further - and as mentioned, I'm really hard on glasses. Thanks again..... Ken.

Works fine for me - Firefox 1.5.0.9.

Three days. I'm afraid to enter your shop....

Seriously, do you know what resin the fallen pair was made of? And what exactly did it die of?

If you talk to an optician about industrial use and shock resistance, he will sell you polycarbonate. They are taught only that industrial means polycarbonate. I got this story too, but I knew that polycarbonate was very soft and soluable, and would not survive my shop. So, I did a little research on lens materials, leading to the decision to use CR-39.

Another thing I discovered was in reaction to the optician trying to sell me various high-index (of refraction) lens materials, which are very expensive. The claim is that the lenses are thinner and therefor less obtrusive. They are thinner, by about 20% at most, compared to CR-39, but I could not see how this would be large enough a difference to matter. And the high-index resins are also soft and soluable, although less so than polycarbonate.

Joe Gwinn

Actually it was not the shop that killed them. I was on a trip to AZ to supprize my dad for his 75th birthday and I had pulled into a rest stop for a nap. I set my glasses on the dash and when I awoke I reached out to retrieve then and they fell on to the carpet. In fumbleing around trying to find them I slid them on the carpet and scratched the piss out of them.

That pair was a replacement for one that fell off when I was asleep in the recliner and became FUBAR when I sat up. Those lenses survived, but the spindly frames were shot. Those were about a month old and had minor scratching from my shirttail.

At the time, my next door neighbor was an optician and his kid worked for me as an apprentice so I was getting glasses on the cheap, but this was when I decided to go back to glass lenses and strong frames. I suspect that a lot of the push for plastic lenses is that with plastic they can sell coatings and tints, and the lenses do not have to be tempered once they grind the shape to the edge.

Yeah, the Titanium frames are from 49 to 59 bucks... each... Ken.

.. how much are they at your opticians office?

GWE

I know that they are *much* more, but I was pointing out that If you want titanium frames and you have a tri-focal prescription - ya ain't gonna walk away for $29. However, you will absolutely save a bundle. Question tho, what about all the "measuring" they do at the ops office concerning placement of the different lenses (tri focal) - is that information somehow included in the prescription? Ken.

I've only bought single type lenses, no multifocals at all. I had a pair of bifocals and couldn't weld with them, the arc would always wander out of the "up-close" zone and then I'd wobble around blindly and the weld would be ugly. So I just got a prescription for glasses with magnification only but with a longer focal length than readers, and entered those data into the optical4less Web site. If you are contemplating purchasing some glasses, I encourage you to visit zennioptical.com or optical4less.com and pick one of their frames and start clicking through their screens as though you were purchasing online. You will rapidly see the information they ask for and if indeed they take the data you mention in this posting. I found the optical4less Web site to be very effective (if a little bit klunky) and my guess is that the guys in Hong Kong making the glasses are very sharp indeed and know all about trifocals.

GWE

On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 02:15:29 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, Ken Sterling (Ken Sterling) quickly quoth:

True and true.

Ask your last optometrist for the info if you don't have a copy of the prescription. Or sneak into a local eyeglass shop (Costco/strip mall/Wally World, etc.) and ask them to measure you for pupillary distance and height. If the girl is bored, they won't charge you.

========================================================== CAUTION: Do NOT look directly into laser with remaining eyeball! ==========================================================

In article , Robert Nichols wrote: :In article , :Grant Erwin wrote: ::Robert Nichols wrote: ::> In article , ::> beecrofter wrote: ::> : ::> :I have frameless titanium with tinted and ar coated lenses on right ::> :now, shipping included they were 44.95 from Zenni ::> :I doubt you will find anyone to repair yours for a reasonable fee. ::> ::> This thread came along at exactly the right time for me. I'm ordering ::> a new pair of computer glasses from Zenni Optical for $37.86, shipping ::> included. For that price I can't even get one lens from Lenscrafters ::> ($80+ per lens, $200 for frame, $380+ total). ::> :: ::Please post a review when they show up, Bob. :: ::I wish there were a big US optical company that were publically ::traded. I'd short the shit out of their stock. After the word gets out ::I can't even imagine one single person spending 10X the price any more ::when they don't have to. : :Look for a followup in about 2 weeks.

OK, the glasses arrived on schedule, but with a problem. One of the lenses was bad, *really* bad. Not a wrong prescription, but improperly made with rippling distortion in the visual field and proper correction only in a tiny area in the center of the lens. Not the sort of thing you expect in a single-vision lens.

I called Zenni's toll-free number and got right through to a very nice lady in customer service. After I described the problem and verified that I had entered the prescription correctly, she asked me to send the glasses back and they would see what happened. I asked if my prescription (I have a fairly unusual and strong cylinder correction) might present some unusual problem, and she said, "No, that should be a piece of cake." FWIW, the lens for the other eye, with an even stronger correction, was just fine.

So, we'll see what happens now. So far, they're handling the problem well. Assuming a new lens will have to be shipped from China, I guess it looks like another two weeks. But hey, my latest $480.00 glasses from a local shop weren't ready until after a seven (7) week comedy of errors, including wrong size frames, orders that "fell in a crack somewhere," and a ruined lens.