Ideal clean room conditions

Tokai Optecs has a patent for an ultra-high refraction index of 1.76, which makes it possible to manufacture very thin lenses with a high degree of correction. In order to ensure that everything is produced on time and delivered to all distributors across Europe, the business approached Munters for solutions. Kurt and Johan Leuridan are brothers that work at the company. Kurt is the CEO, and Johan takes care of all the technical matters. “We already had a clean room with an air treatment system installed in the roof. However this needed to be changed. The air treatment system has to run 24 hours a day to ensure production conditions were good enough, however this was still not possible”, explains Johan Leuridan. “We simply could not meet demand, especially in the summer, as we were having to throw away too many products. Keeping the temperature and humidity consistent and at the optimum level is very important, as well as keeping the room dust free. We could not achieve that with our old air treatment system. Which was why we asked Munters to get involved”.

Unparalleled quality

“We replaced the air treatment system on the roof with the Munters installation that dries, cools and filters the air,” explains Johan. “Now we can be sure that there will be no droplets of condensation forming on the lenses or clouding of the lens coating. This ensures our lenses are consistently top quality.” “Everything works as it should, irrespective of the time of year. This results in less reject products and increased profits,” Johan says. “Pressure is greater day to day nowadays, because consumers expect to order a pair of glasses on a Saturday and to pick up the finished custom-made glasses a week later. We now have more capacity to get this done on time and send the lenses out to distributors without any issues.” “We are very happy that we took this step,” concludes Johan. “As well as fewer rejected products, the coating can be kept for longer, and we have a timer on the installation so that it only needs to run during production hours. This means we will have achieved our return on investment in energy costs alone in just three years. In this way, we can coat all lenses in a uniformly precise way, as we develop them, and also continue to innovate.”