Found This From Oakley Regarding Their Lenses.

[Sunglass Shack]

I was going through some training manuals for fun and found this section. It deals with carbon being in polycarbonate, but one of the members here found on wikipedia that carbon is not in polycarbonate ... So what is your guys take on this? Should I ask?

 

[Batwolf]

We all know about the testing. Me personally, I've worked with the Rolling O Lab for 3 different events in my time as an employee.

As far as lenses are concerned, they start out as pellets like this:

The lenses are mixed with ratios based on whatever the lens base is (grey, persimmon, G30, yellow, etc) and from there it is heated in a vat and because of impurities (dirt, dust, oils, etc.) inherit in the polycarbonate the impurities will float to the middle/bottom when they go through the heating process. This makes the top portion of the vat the purest form of the material and that is what is used for the lenses. The rest is re-heated and recycled into another batch of lenses. The black puck on the right side of the photo was a chunk of the impure material left over from a batch of lenses. The shield is a leftover cutout from making an Oil Rig lens. Fuel Cell (I believe?) right below that.

I've never heard of these impurities referred to as carbon though.

 

[nlgrav182]

The black puck on the right side of the photo was a chunk of the impure material left over from a batch of lenses.

Is this the chunk of stuff that was given to attendees of the Pilot event?

 

[Sunglass Shack]

Weird then they are actually telling their vendors this. I think I will bring it up to my rep, see what he says.

 

[Batwolf]

Is this the chunk of stuff that was given to attendees of the Pilot event?

Yep exactly. Little black pucks of polycarbonate "sludge" (the run off, or impurest parts of lens batches).

Let me see if I can find my employee manual from 2008/2009, it has a very detailed write-up and we were trained extensively about the production process.

 

[RetinaBurn]

They call it Purge.

 

[qtrain23]

I was going through some training manuals for fun and found this section. It deals with carbon being in polycarbonate, but one of the members here found on wikipedia that carbon is not in polycarbonate ... So what is your guys take on this? Should I ask?

View attachment 2865

They're not removing the carbon. They're removing the impurities.

There is carbon in polycarbonate. Hence the name. And look at the structure.

 

[Sunglass Shack]

They're not removing the carbon. They're removing the impurities.

There is carbon in polycarbonate. Hence the name. And look at the structure.

But we've been over this in another thread. I nearly got called stupid for saying there was carbon in polycarbonate. It appeared the chemical composition of polycarbonate has no carbon in it. I have always been told there is carbon in polycarbonate, hence the name. If you read my other thread about misconceptions on lenses being made in China another member says that is wrong. I could care less who is right or wrong, I'm more interested in learning facts. Both for my own knowledge and was is being passed along to the customer.

 

[Sunglass Shack]

It would be great if we as a community could crack the truth open on polycarbonate. Is there carbon? Isn't there? If there isn't, is it just a selling tactic? I'm very intrigued to find out.

 

[qtrain23]

No you said they removed the carbon and were left with just poly. What you said in the other thread was very different and was indeed wrong