Cheap Fast Eyeglasses from a Desktop Fabricator

purduephotog writes "Doctoral candidate Saul Griffith of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and inventor of the Lego powered chocolate printer was awarded the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventing a device that molds eyeglasses rapidly and cheaply. Best of all, he's motivated for the good of humanity."

Making a difference

[BWJones]

Griffith's thesis research is actually on "programmable self-assembly, how to make things automatically make things," he said.

This is the really interesting scientific angle of his work, and based on this, I would say that this small $30k prize is only the beginning for this guy. This approach demonstrates a unique perspective to problem solving that shows how innovative folks like Saul are. But perhaps more importantly for the future of science, science education, and the overall good, he has a social conscience that allowed him to identify a problem that affects people worldwide and has found an innovative solution that does what we all should aspire to do: Make a difference.

And he also makes the rest of us scientists look good. :-)

Good on you Saul.

The Home-Insudtrial Revolution?

[American AC in Paris]

Desktop fabrication is going to be an interesting one to watch.

Imagine downloading and printing a new bowl for your food processor, or a new toy for your kid.

Imagine, too, the anguished hand-wringing of corporations over the illegal distribution of copyrighted object designs over the Internet.

Imagine, too, the anguished hand-wringing of governments when the technology reaches a point where you can print parts for an AK-47.

My bet is it's going to be quite the roller-coaster ride when it gets here, and that it's closer than we think...

Re:The Home-Insudtrial Revolution?

[ktanmay]

I wonder how you're planning on getting the raw materials for all that, this isn't about turning straw into gold.

Re:such a shame

[sisukapalli1]

"what a great way to make sure a great invention never makes it big. I predict that in 10 years it will still have less than 5% market share. kind of like linux."

As opposed to, say, commercial stuff like Irix, which are ...

S

"motivated for the good of humanity."

[Anonymous Coward]

and this folks is what being a real team player is all about, in society where we tell our children that greed and selfishness is bad yet buisnesses teach us the exact opposite , that greed is good and if you are not making 500$ a second profit you are failing, these sorts of things dont come round enough, ask yourself why are you here ? to be a wage slave or to make a real difference to peoples lives

A>S

Re:Fool

[Denyer]

True... to an extent. The 'best' solution involves holding the patent, and letting people use it for humanitarian work for free.

Re:Fool

[Eagle5596]

He is patenting the device, and I for one applaud him for letting people use it. Where has our world gone that we call humanitarians fools? Last I checked, "you can't take it with you", and when it comes down to it, with the brains he has, I am sure he will find a job, especially as a Doctoral candidate. I applaud him for thinking of the wellfare of others before thinking of a new sports car like most of america.

Re:More unemployed

[MrCam]

I doubt this would destroy a profession. It would take years for this to spread and there is still a need for Opthomologists. This would just make Optimologists a little less employable. This might actually increase eye glass sales. I know that I need a new perscription but I can't afford the $200 or more for even cheap exam, glasses and frames. If they could lower the cost of the exam, glasses and frames. I would mostly likely buy a new pair every year. I might even get a couple different types for different occations.

The real cost of glasses?

[Hoi Polloi]

I hope his next machine makes the frames. The experiences of folks I know who wear glasses (I don't) has been that the lenses are not the biggest cost, it is the frames. Why do frames cost so damn much? I know super cheap frames would be fine for charitable aid to poor people just so they can see but the cost of your average frames, something that strikes me as pretty simple to make, is way too high in the US.

Are frames really that complex and hard to make or is there a lack of competition in the marketplace?

Eye Doctors becomming obsolete

[pudge_lightyear]

Wow... could it be that in a few years, traditional eye doctors will become obsolete, replaced by scientists and machine assemblers who never see a patient. I'm taking this from the guy who said he could see these next to the blood pressure machine in wal-mart.

Could this be the writing on the wall for any similar "traditionally" professional occupations. If this is the case for eye doctors, which I'm sure didn't "SEE" this coming, I wonder what's next. Could there be a machine that analyzes your blood and prescribes through a vending machine your prescription?

OR... could I be thinking the insane thinking that many slashdotters and other people do when this type of thing is first invented.

Remember that cars were going to fly long before the year 2000.

Kudos to Saul Griffith

[Anonymous Coward]

Having -8.5 dioptre I can imagine how it would suck to life without noseglasses.

Well, thanks to this man there might soon be roughly 1 billion people less with such a problem.

Good Job.

Re:If only...

[leomekenkamp]

I don't see why it should be one or the other. Agreed, we've got a lot of Rambus, Enron and SCO alike companies, but there is also this company, or the body shop, which donates 10% of its profits to charity.

Re:If only...

[TheSync]

If you look closely at the site, you will see that to effectively get the eyeglass lens molders into work in third-world countries, they will depend on "microentrepreneurs" in those countries selling glasses for about $5 each. These people will, of course, be motivated by the almightly dollar (or rupee or whatever).

Re:The Home-Insudtrial Revolution?

[American AC in Paris]

I used the AK-47 as an example for that very reason. It's already an easy weapon to manufacture and use, but you still need some form of metalworking facility to build one, and you need some experience with metalworking and gunsmithing to be able to produce a functional weapon.

Now, if we reach the point where John Q. Malcontent can download and print the various parts of an AK-47 in the comfort of his own studio apartment in a matter of hours...

Wrong kind of idealism

[e.m.rainey]

Get your mod points ready...

I "like" how the story posters of slashdot are blinded by these bland phrases like "good of humanity". What exactly does that mean here? Is he giving it away for free? No, but it will be cheap. Is he opening the IP up? No, it's patent pending. In fact he's begining to sound like a (*gasp*) capitalist! And we all know they been knocked around here enough to be demonized. But unsuprisingly when a capitalist helps the poor by helping himself he's a put up on a pedastal as the savior of humanity, but if he helps himself by helping the rich or even just the middle class he's deridded as a scum sucking bottom feeder business man. Why the double standard, slashdot? Why? Is it because the motives seem more pure or somehow more righteous? That perhaps, because poor people get the short end of the stick all over the world that they don't just need help, but somehow deserve it too? That we are compelled to serve them? And when we don't feel compelled by this directive we've somehow failed at an obvious yet never stated goal of life?

What this guy has done is great, not because it will help poor people but because he's been extremely clever. I hope he makes an assload of money. Of course once he does make a reasonable sum, some people will complain that his motives aren't pure anymore. One can only hope they can synthesize becoming rich and helping poor people in the same thought.

Re:The Home-Insudtrial Revolution?

[R2.0]

Fwiw, your sig has a problem - it should be "A wedding is a ritual..."

wedding:marriage::funeral:death

Re:Eye Doctors becomming obsolete

[WormholeFiend]

Eye doctors do more than just prescribe eyeglasses. They can also diagnose eye diseases and conditions, and refer patients to more specialized medical treatments. For example, the fact that someone's eyesight is decreasing could be due to blood vessels bursting inside the eye as a result of diabetes. A simple machine that just measures your eyeglass prescription cant check that.

Comparing this with bloodpressure devices is silly. Any data about a specific measurement of a condition in the body has to be assessed along with other contextual data (other symptoms or lack thereof) to determine if there's a problem.

So, until you can have a machine that can read all possible physical data outputs from a person's body, and analyse in real time all possible medical problems based on those measurements, I doubt doctors of any field will become obsolete.

Re:The Home-Insudtrial Revolution?

[StrawberryFrog]

Imagine, too, the anguished hand-wringing of governments when the technology reaches a point where you can print parts for an AK-47.

A desktop robot that can mould and carve soft plastic is one thing, but machining a gun barrel from iron alloy is another. It's much harder in both senses.

And unless you want to design a desktop iron smelter, you'd also need to give it just the right lump of metal alloy.

Re:Wrong kind of idealism

[proj_2501]

The poor need help, and this guy is giving them help, which many people don't do. Seriously, how hard is this to understand?

Re:I predict...

[buckeyeguy]

Depends... are the molded lenses of 'final-use' quality, or do they need some sort of finishing or polishing after the mold process? Then there's shaping the outline of the lenses to match the frames, edging them for stability and glare reduction, etc. Creating plastic lenses that you'd want on your face all day probably taks a bit more than just molding.

Re:Automatic vision testers! hooray!

[lish2]

You are correct, they do have machines that can automatically determine your prescription. However, they aren't 100% accurate. Generally a good optometrist will do that, then also use that as a factor in where to start the "flip the lenses" bit. Since they have a suggestion of where to start, so it goes much faster. But they still do the manual proceedure. If the two agree, great. But relying on the automated one without any sort of "sanity check" on its accuracy isn't a good idea.

Also I'm not sure the machines work on determining astigmatism.

The difference

[Baron_Yam]

Usually, there is no interest in finding solutions for the world's poor - because the profit margins are vanishingly small compared to selling things to the world's middle and upper classes.

This guy is great because, while he will be trying to make some money (guy's gotta eat, you know), he engineered a solution for a problem everyone overlooked because despite the potential for improving a great number of people's quality of life, the potential profit margin was too low.

Personally, I think he needs to package this system up and sell it and supplies to the four-eyed with money first. I'd like to be able to print out new lenses whenever I wanted, and if his process really is so much better, it would be cheaper than buying every couple of years from my optometrist.

Re:Wrong kind of idealism

[raisin]

Your post sounds more like an excuse to be bitter, even though it doesn't really have much to do with the person in question, or the story. You raise a really good point, but it's not particularly relevant here.

It's awfully cynical to suggest that "good of humanity" and the slightest wiff of "capitalism" be so diametrically opposed. Abusive capitalism can always be a problem, but as it exists here, there's nothing to suggest that it's the least bit abusive. The business venture side of this project (http://www.lowcosteyeglasses.net/) is in the business of helping a lot of people correct their vision who had no chance of getting glasses in the past.

Think about it, he's developed a method for low-cost eyeglasses, and is targeting developing nations with it. Why try for a few pennies off of poor people when he could instead make his "assload of money" off of lots of the other ideas/abilities he has (as mentioned in the article). This is something that actually has good intentions, don't be so shocked!

Re:Fool

[monkeydo]

We don't have poor healthcare in our country. We have top notch healthcare. We even have your best doctors. Now, go put your name on that waiting list so that in 2 months you can get in to see that heart specialist that you really need to see today.

Re:Wrong kind of idealism

[YellowBook]

I think you may be missing the point. It's good to help people. It's very good to make money by helping people. This is what's called Right Livelihood [beyondthenet.net] in Buddhism. It's one of the components of the Noble Eightfold Path.

I don't think most Slashdotters have anything against a free market. I certainly don't. What I do object to, however, are business models that rely on distortions of the free market: state-enforced private monopolies in land, raw materials, and information; the externalization of the costs of production (e.g., pollution, paying less than a living wage so that the state is forced to step in to prevent poverty, not paying health care so that the cost of the uninsured is pushed off on the state and on hospitals), the exploitation of workers (as above, but also lockouts, the use of private or state violence to break strikes, company towns, slavery, etc.), and the use of deceptive marketing to avoid the free-market ideal of a fully-informed consumer. All of these things are part of capitalism, but they're not part of a free market. Rather, they are deviations from a free market that benefit the class of people that already own property. For a look at what a real free market would look like, read up on Mutualism [mutualist.org].

What's good about this story is that the business plan uses a real free-market solution to do well by doing good. Not only should it dramatically reduce the cost of glasses in underserved parts of the world, it will also provide "micro-entrepeneurs" [lowcosteyeglasses.net] in poor areas to make a living while doing so. When done properly, a free market can benefit everyone. However, the non-free market we call corporate capitalism doesn't do this.

Re:Companion Program for eyeware perscriptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Since with high resolution monitors and 256 (or more)levels of gray available, it should be possible to create an 'eye chart' that looks bleary and out-of-focus to a normally-sighted person but sharp and clearly-focused to someone with deformed vision.


This will not work - a patient with poor eyesight will see everything on the monitor with greater bluuriness than a person with perfect sight.

Re:The Home-Insudtrial Revolution?

[jafiwam]

3D printers are cool.

But they rely on the properties of a liquid goo turning to a solid when hit with UV lased light.

They can make three dimensional objects by simply lowering the object into the goo and adding more layers.

But you are still left with an OBJECT MADE OF THE HARDENED GOO. Great, it breaks, it's toxic, has no heat tolerance, and needs to be smoothed and screw holes tapped in it.

It's a great tool for manufacturers and those that develop machines and parts and stuff.

To make a USEFUL part out of it, you have to either put up with everything made of the same stuff (which really limits its usefulness) or then take the object to a foundry and get it copied into a metal shape.

I vote this thing is still decades off. Just like the flying car...

interesting, but cost is not the right target

[wmeyer]

I used to purchase my glasses from a "dispensing optician" when I lived in Toronto. The way it worked was that I paid his cost for the lenses and frames, and a fee for his share in things. Lenses were less than CDN$10 a pair (in 1993). So the invention is interesting, but the notion of lessening the cost is unlikely. The cost of lenses is small, but the margin on lenses is high.