Spanish ophthalmic technology company IOT says it is the first to 3D print personalized progressive lenses. Its Light-Form Technology forms a complete lens from a single flash of light in a few seconds, and the company says lenses made this way are already on sale to consumers.
The process avoids the layer-by-layer build associated with most additive manufacturing, and it skips the generating and polishing steps that conventional lens surfacing depends on. IOT frames the method as a change to how a lens is formed rather than a faster version of an existing production step.
IOT also claims the method is lighter on resources than traditional lens production. Compared with conventional methods, it uses no water in manufacturing, needs 90% less energy and produces 76% less waste. Those figures, the company notes, cover the manufacturing stage only.
How Light-Form forms a lens
The process is based on stabilized frontal photopolymerization. Light cures the whole volume of the lens in a single pass instead of shaping it gradually from a blank, and that forming stage takes seconds. Several finishing steps follow before a lens is complete: unused resin is recovered to limit waste, the surface is hardened, and the lens is mapped.
According to IOT, a new production method for personalized progressive lenses has to reproduce the intended optical design precisely, not merely produce a recognizable shape. The company says Light-Form combines the design freedom of digital manufacturing with those optical requirements, so that additive manufacturing can deliver prescription lenses at commercial optical quality. IOT adds that the approach opens more options for future lens architectures and individualized designs.
“Light-Form demonstrates how scientific research can change the way ophthalmic lenses are made,” said José Alonso, co-founder and CINO of IOT. He added that pairing optical precision with a new production method could help optical partners create personalized products, test new lens architectures and run more flexible manufacturing.
Rethinking where lenses are made
IOT presents the technology as a way to redesign the production chain rather than only speed up forming. Larger installations could run several printing heads to raise output without taking up much floor space. Further ahead, the company sees compact machines making custom lenses inside optical stores, which would move production next to the customer and reduce the need to hold stock.
“The value lies in rethinking the production workflow,” said Carolina Gago, COO of IOT. She said resin recovery and lower water and energy requirements address how resources are used, while compact equipment could support production closer to consumers, and that the company is working to translate these capabilities into practical manufacturing options.
For optical laboratories, that could mean organizing capacity around demand in their own area instead of relying only on centralized surfacing equipment. For wearers, IOT says the long-term benefit is faster access to lenses made for them, while optical partners would still play the central role in vision correction and customer service.
Smart glasses on the development roadmap
IOT is also looking beyond conventional spectacles. One option under development is printing prescription optics directly onto the waveguides and flat substrates used in smart glasses and augmented reality headsets, which the company says could make such devices thinner and lighter. It also suggests that custom optical shapes could eventually be useful in virtual reality.
Additive manufacturing takes aim at conventional lens production
IOT is not the first to apply digital manufacturing to vision correction. Luxexcel was an early example in prescription eyewear: instead of the roughly 30 steps typical of conventional lens production, which requires large inventories and yields high wastage, it built lenses layer by layer in a material jetting process and could print single vision, freeform and multifocal progressive designs. Luxexcel also embedded waveguides into prescription lenses for smart glasses, a direction IOT is now exploring, and Meta later acquired the company as part of its AR technology efforts.
More recently the approach has moved into point-of-care contact lenses. A team at the University of Waterloo has developed a system that 3D prints custom contact lenses in roughly 20 minutes, raising the prospect that a patient could be measured, have a lens designed and walk out wearing it after one clinic visit. The work earned a Gold Medal at the Shanghai International Exhibition of Inventions in June 2026.
Taken together, these projects show additive manufacturing moving into optical production. IOT says its Light-Form personalized progressive lenses are already reaching consumers.