Lemelson-MIT Prize won by eyeglass printing machine

Australian Saul Griffith, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology doctoral candidate, has won the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventing a machine which quickly tests vision and a desktop machine which manufactures low-cost eyeglass lenses. These machines could dramatically improve life for billions of people in developing countries who cannot access, nor afford, prescription glasses.”

These machines could dramatically improve life for billions of people in developing countries who cannot access, nor afford, prescription glasses.”

Merton Flemings, director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, which sponsors the annual award for inventiveness, cited Griffith’s innovative device eyeglass manufacturing and his work creating comic strips that inspire children to learn about science and engineering as important reasons he was chosen this year.

“It’s sometimes easier for engineers and scientists to work on the next generation of computer chips or the next PDA, but there are some beautiful problems that a lot of people don’t go after because it’s hard to get support and funding and it’s incredibly hard to be successful,” Griffith said. “It would be nice if my work inspired others to address some of these problems and make them more acceptable.”

Griffith’s advances in low-cost lenses sprung from his interests in rapid prototyping technologies and efficient manufacturing. Using a process dubbed programmable molding, he created a portable device similar to a desktop printer that can produce any prescription lens from a single-mould surface in less than ten minutes. The device casts the lenses by applying pressure and constraints to a programmable membrane, which becomes the mould surface when under pressure. The current device uses car window tinting film for the membrane and a reservoir of baby oil for applying the correct pressure. A large range of lens types, covering the majority of prescriptions, can be cast from two such mould surfaces.

Traditional lens manufacturing systems require expensive moulds for each lens type. In remote rural areas, it is cost-prohibitive to maintain a library of thousands of lenses for relatively small populations of people. The traditional process not only comes with enormous inventory and handling costs, but also can result in excessive waste. Griffith’s patent-pending device essentially eliminates these problems.

But efficient lens manufacturing is only half the issue. Proper diagnosis of vision problems is the other half. Current automatic diagnostic technologies are expensive, fragile and error-prone. Because they rely on a patient looking at electronically generated images a few inches away from his or her face, they can lead to incorrect diagnoses. Plus, highly skilled people are required to operate these machines.

To resolve this problem, Griffith has created a prototype device to test the human eye. Patients need only wear the device, which looks like an oversized pair of goggles, and look at the world around them. An electronic sensor superimposed on the goggles monitors the lens in the wearer’s eye and adjusts the device’s lens to cancel the refractive errors, thus determining the correct prescription.

Griffith’s interest in rapid prototyping and personal fabrication could someday lead to what he terms, “low cost digitally enabled machine tools that allow more people to build their own stuff.”

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