OYOglasses, Make Eyewear: 3D Printing Challenges for Customized Glasses Companies

Posted By Sculpteo on Dec 8, 2011 | 1 comment

OYOglasses, Make Eyewear…Two companies that might not sound familiar to you yet…but might come in handy soon! We recently had the pleasure of meeting David Minich from Make Eyewear and Michael Righi from OYOglasses. Both are in the process of building companies doing 3D printed customized eyewear.

David Minich is taking a year off from Fort Worth, TX, design school to build Make Eyewear. He discovered 3D printing studying industrial design and decided to begin to play with it. He launched Make Eyewear a few month ago: a website that lets you choose between 3D printed freestyle or predesigned glasses.

Michael Righi (picture below) is a software engineer and entrepreneur passionate about eyewear. Less than a year ago, Michael decided to jump into 3D printing technologies to build OYOglasses (for Own Your Own glasses). He moved a few months ago from Pittsburgh to San Francisco, motivated by the desire of meeting other hardware entrepreneurs and 3D printing enthusiasts.

Eyewear is a market that fits perfectly with 3D printing technologies because it allows full and precise customization on small to medium-size products. For entrepreneurs that see a huge opportunity in mass customization, 3D printing is a key technology.

Who has never dreamed of having a pair of glasses that fit perfectly? Both OYOglasses and Make Eyewear founders pointed out to us all kinds of surprising common eyewear’s misfits. From large noses to unbalanced ears or long eyelashes, there are plenty of customers’ problems to solve with customized eyewear!

OYOglasses developped software that will let you visualize your face in 3D and adjust glasses so that they fit perfectly. Once you chose your glasses, you can change most of the design to make them your very own (shape, material, color). The order is then sent to a 3D manufacturer. Your lenses will next be added by a third-party specialist and you’ll receive your glasses in your mailbox. Count approximatively 3 weeks before being able to put your unique glasses on your nose!

On MakeEyewear, you can order your own glasses by working to define your style and the shapes you like with a designer. Both companies are focusing on customization but with different approaches.

Prototyping is a key phase in the process of creating 3D printed products. For glasses it’s even more true as it’s a piece of design that define a person’s style and affects how they see the world! Both entrepreneurs we visited agreed that finding the right material, texture and color at an affordable final price was a challenge. This, as well as quality of 3D printing will of course have a large influence on their success! Here are some of the more than a hundred 3D printed prototypes tried by OYOglasses founders:

As a 3D printing entrepreneur, what were the challenges you faced? Let’s start the discussion!