During the manufacturing process, lenses can accumulate dust, particles, or residues that can affect their optical properties. Cleaning helps remove these contaminants, ensuring the lens surface is pristine before moving on to subsequent manufacturing steps.

The existing technology for cleaning lenses provides machines designed as long tunnels in which multiple cleaning stations are aligned along a main conveyor system, which transports the lenses without any holding system. Those traditional solutions have several limitations, including contamination while moving the lenses from the washing to the inspection, extensive footprint, risk of damage, and possibility of human error during the very repetitive manual inspection.

 

MEI has developed ClearXM, a compact system that automatically cleans and inspects edged lenses. It integrates a loading device to inspect ophthalmic lenses of any shape, and a cleaning section with multiple sealed chambers, featuring laminar air flow to prevent contamination. ClearXM optimizes the cleaning process and applies the appropriate pressure and movement patterns needed to effectively remove dust, smudges, or other particles from the lens surface while avoiding the risk of scratching or other damage. This innovative solution is the first of its kind on the market, capable of managing edged lenses while providing fully automated cleaning and cosmetic inspection.

The main advantages of ClearXM include:

  • Higher throughput (up to 300 lenses/hour)
  • Higher quality thanks to accurate and continuous automated monitoring
  • Possibility to customize the washing program depending on the type of lenses
  • Integration into a fully automated process
  • Possibility to integrate ClearXM into an EZLine, right after MEI edgers
  • Optimized footprint

Following the cleaning process, the lenses are subjected to a thorough cosmetic inspection performed by SurfXM, an optical scanning device that underlines any cosmetic defects. By integrating MEI AI, this system can store and analyze thousands of data points to automatically assess if the processed lens quality meets the required standards.

ClearXM is available for sale, while the SurfXM option is still a concept under development.