Morrow: Addition at the touch of a button
A visit at Morrow in Belgium
A Belgian start-up has a product that many people have long dreamed of: glasses with combined far and near correction, but with the comfort of a unifocal lens. The addition is done electronically and activated via touch of a button. The 3D-printed smart glasses are already on sale in some regions. MAFO visited the company to see the production process and test the smart glasses.
We are in an industrial area near the Belgian city Ghent, looking for the start-up Morrow. The young company’s offices and production facilities are supposedly hidden in a large brick building. A discreet nameplate at the entrance to the building is the only indication that we are in the right place. We take the elevator to the fourth floor, where we will meet later the CEO Frederiek Ysebaert and his team.
Addition with one click
The glasses we are seeing here today are something very special. They are designed to make the dream of many people come true: addition at the touch of a button.
The glasses are suitable for presbyopes. At the same time, however, they are designed to do without the typical limitations of progressive lenses. For example, the aim is to completely eliminate distracting aberrations. Instead, users should benefit from a large, wide distance range and a smaller near range, the addition of which is only “switched on” when required. However, the current model is more or less a hybrid of smart glasses and progressive lenses ‒ but more on that later.
“After years of research, I think we launched one of the most innovative technologies in the market for presbyopic people,” says Davide Airey, Chief Sales Director, proudly describing the glasses. “Progressive lenses have been one of the most important innovations of the eyewear market. But at the same time, they are a compromise between far and near distance.”
Smart and 3D-printed
Ahead of us lies a model box with different versions of the smart glasses, which are also available for opticians to show customers. The frame is currently still 3D-printed, but will be available in other materials in the future.
The current model is available in different colors and shapes. Visually, it is similar to other 3D-printed frames, although the temple must of course be slightly wider, as this is where the technology and the button are housed. The glasses weigh around 40 grams and the battery should last around two days before the glasses need to be recharged.
The spectacle lenses look in the area for distance viewing like any other transparent lens. However, one can see the potential reading area in the lens, which is similar in size to that of a bifocal lens. This is because at the point where the addition is generated by clicking, you can see a film shining through, with fine rings and dots visible.
However, in the wearer´s face this zone of the glasses is hardly recognizable at first glance.
The liquid crystal lens sandwich
Now we want to try the glasses. A customer who orders the glasses will of course receive them in the appropriate diopters. For us, the test is a small compromise, as the distance is not corrected. Nevertheless, it is clear that the addition can actually be produced at the touch of a button and makes reading easier. The glasses function as they should ‒ but how exactly does it work?
The Chief Sales Director explains that the glasses are constructed like a sandwich. In the middle of the “sandwich” are liquid crystal lenses that change their orientation when tension is applied so that the light is refracted more or less strongly. Additionally, a normal spectacle lens sits both in front of and behind the foil with liquid crystal lenses.
Active and passive addition
However, there are currently still limitations. For example, the electronically generated addition is still limited to one diopter. Nevertheless, many people who require a higher addition are already wearing the glasses. To make this possible, the company works with a trick they call passive addition.
A progressive lens with slight addition is used for one part of the sandwich lens. The additional addition of the liquid crystal film adds up the power. However, the aberrations remain low, as it is usual with low additions in progressive lenses.
In future, it should also be possible to further increase the active addition. There are also plans to increase the size of the addition zone. At the moment, the size of the special area is similar to that of bifocal lenses. If the start-up succeeds in significantly enlarging this field, the glasses would also be extremely exciting for working at the computer and other screen-based activities and much more.
Now that the basic questions have been answered, Anshul Sharma, Head of Operations, shows us around the production facility.
Under yellow light
Many important steps in production take place under the strictest hygienic conditions in a cleanroom (ISO 6). This means we have to change clothes before entering the critical area. A smock has to be worn, shoe covers, a cap for the hair and of course a face mask ‒ absolute cleanliness is mandatory here.
We enter a yellow-lit room, which is once again protected by a slatted curtain. Highly concentrated employees are working on the first steps. “Here we have open layers. That’s why it has to be 100% clean. You also see that we have light sensitive materials here, like adhesives, which are UV sensitive. That’s why everything is done under the yellow light,” explains Sharma.
Here two plastic substrates are adhered together using a UV sensitive adhesive dispensed through an industrial inkjet printer. Then, pre-punched substrates are filled with liquid crystal under vacuum using a special machine. From the outside, the liquid crystals look like any other transparent liquid.
In the small production area, you can see very different machines put together to create a semi-automated pilot production line. Some manufacturer brands are well-known in the ophthalmic industry, others not at all. The Head of Operations, Anshul Sharma explains why this is the case: “Market existing tools are there for certain applications. But we need to adapt them to make them work for our processes. That’s one of our biggest challenges when you come from producing like 20 samples in a month, and then taking it to like >400 samples a month. That’s one big goal to increase the throughput further.” After quality control of the filled films, it’s on to the next step.
Assembly area
In the next room, liquid crystal lens stack and ophthalmic lenses are assembled to generate ophthalmic industry compatible puck called e-blanks. The special machined fronts are received from their partner Tokai. Once a customer order is placed, the e-blank is sent back to the manufacturer Tokai. Only now is the progressive surface milled into the lens. This is why you can still see the block piece on the e-blanks at Morrow.
However, the special sandwich lens is not yet finished and also the production process in Belgium is not yet complete. The coating is still missing and, of course, the lens still needs to be edged. These steps will be carried out again at Morrow in Belgium as soon as the e-blank with the right diopters and design comes back from Tokai.
As the special lens cannot be coated with conventional vacuum coaters, the start-up uses film lamination technology from the manufacturer Satisloh. With this technology, the anti-reflective coating and the hard coating are laminated onto the lens in the form of a special film. In the final step of lens production, the lens is edged using a MEI edger.
Lens and frame combined
The final step is to combine the 3D-printed frame with the special lens. This is no trivial matter, as electronics are built into both the frame temple and the groove. The Belgians therefore use a patented technology in which a conductive layer and a special coating are used to connect the two components.
The smart glasses are now ready. But how do the smart glasses reach customers?
The special glasses are sold exclusively by opticians and are currently only available in Belgium and France. But the company wants more. New markets are being closely observed and strategies developed. In five years, the glasses should be available on at least three continents: America, Asia and Europe.
So far, the start-up has hundreds of customers and not yet thousands, explains CEO Frederiek Ysebaert. Step by step, however, the aim is to go further and make the product even better.
Ambitious goals for the coming years
Ysebaert would like to expand the frame materials in order to make the models even more fashionable and chic. In addition, the active electronically generated addition should produce more than one diopter in the future.
And last but not least, the company is working on ways to extend the active part to the entire lens. However, this is also about sales strategy. The current retail price is already around 1,200 euros. As the liquid crystals are expensive, it is important to consider whether extending the active part is also worthwhile from a financial perspective.
Work is also being done on a way to keep the frame separate from the lenses in the long term. This would mean that, thanks to the special electronic lens, every frame could become smart glasses with switchable addition. The potential is likely to be huge, because even if the glasses are not of interest to absolutely every presbyope, there are target groups that are likely to find the glasses particularly exciting. “The obvious target audiences are people that already have issues with progressive lenses ‒ the non-adapters ‒ and young presbyopes that want to postpone the day that they are actually progressive wearers. But also all people with active lifestyles will benefit more from the technology than others,” summarizes the CEO. With ambitious goals in mind, the company is looking to the future and we are curious to see when we will be able to buy the first glasses with addition at the touch of a button here at the optician around the corner.
