Trufocals

Know anyone who owns more than one pair of eyeglasses? Likely your friend has a pair for reading, one for driving and maybe even one for the computer. As our eyes age, they often lose the ability to accommodate a wide range of focus. This condition is called presbyopia.  (Are you impressed?)

Inventor and Physicist Steve Kurtin conceived of a way to create adjustable focus eyeglasses.

The idea was to combine a fixed-focus lens and a flexible transparent membrane, capturing a transparent fluid between. By flexing the membrane and creating an adjustable curvature, the lens focal length could be changed.

Dr. Kurtin immediately realized how challenging it would be to get anyone to wear glasses like these. The mechanism and optics would need to be designed in a very sensitive way in order to come up with a product that people would wear.

Having worked on several successful products with M Design, Dr. Kurtin immediately came to us to start designing the glasses.

Working with the forces and stiffness required made special materials and processes necessary.  Mechanisms had to be integrated into the design in a way that integrated them well without sacrificing performance.

In order to produce the highest level of distortion free vision, the lenses were dictated to be completely round, further complicating the design. Ultimately several design iterations and multiple generations of functional prototypes were required to perfect the design.

SuperFocus Trufocals eyeglasses are now on the market and being purchased by pilots, architects, machinists and people who appreciate having great vision delivered by one pair of glasses.

The Trufocals went on to gain finalist recognition in the International Design Excellence Awards in 2010.