Poll: Do you want regular AR coated glass lenses, or Toughened AR coated glass lenses?

Off-topic Chatter
1

You can see the archived poll results on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20221220093741/https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/72635

2

I may be wrong, but wouldn't a thinner unhardened lens provide the least optical loss?

3

In reference to this thread.

I think I need to put this out and get a consensus now about the idea of needing toughened/hardened glass.

I cannot cut glass after it's toughened hardened. Glass has to be cut in it's annealed state and toughened hardened afterwords. If the majority would like to buy replacement lenses that are toughened hardened, then a group buy directly through the seller would have to be done.

I need to know, so I don't waste my time buying tooling if people would rather have toughened hardened glass. There's not enough volume here to spend the bucks if it won't pay for itself. That may sound hard, but it's not meant that way. It's just realistic.

So... please vote.

Thanks

EDIT 7/10/13: I feel that there is not enough demand to warrant my purchasing all the tools and glass. I would not make the money back for a while and I just can't afford to put the bucks into it, without the return. Thanks for voting and there's always http://www.flashlightlens.com/ for some of your needs.

4

100% of me wants regular AR coated glass! Yay! It’s a go! :slight_smile:

Edit: Wait, does this mean you’re not going to be making AR Coated Sapphire lenses?

5

I don’t make a habit of throwing lights on the floor, and if I thump someone on the head with one, I want the glass to break and spoil their day as they will be in my house uninvited threatening my family. …

6

For one off or a handful of lenses, it would be nice to have you as a source but 20 or 30 of the same size might be better to do gb and get toughened glass. $.02.

7

If a flashlight with a hardened window drops and the window breaks, wouldn’t it break into MANY pieces? If a regular window breakes, wouldn’t it crack and possibly chip but generally remain intact?

8

Some measure of protection to the emitter with a cracked lens and an intact reflector. Shattered pieces of glass scratching up the reflector and getting stuck in the silicone dome don’t interest me at all.

9

Does this company even do tempered / hardened lenses with AR coating?
Haven’t seen anyone with hardened AR lenses.

Also without pros & cons of tempered / hardened glass there will be extra votes going for hardened. The poll reads: (All else being equal,) Do you want hardened or is regular good enough?
Its not equal choices.

  • If tempered with AR is available it will certainly cost more. Perhaps prohibitively more. :weary:
  • With tempered, we won’t get individual orders of custom sizes whenever you need it. Instead it will likely be a group buy of only the most poplar sizes. :~
  • We won’t have custom Old-Lumens lenses! :open_mouth:
10

Good points.

Well, from my understnding, the coating would be put on after the tempering. I might be wrong about it, but from what I read, that would be the way it's done. Yes, a group buy might be complicated, since there are so many different sizes around. Too bad flashlight Mfg's didn't standardize their lights so that we had only a few lens and reflector diameters.

Nothing is perfect and no answer will ever be the right answer for all. That's true about everything, but at least a majority vote would show which way to go.

11

I want it all . . but I don’t want to pay for it all . . .

12

Toughened/hardened glass and tempered glass are not the same thing… Iphone screens are toughened glass. They don’t fragment like tempered auto glass.

13

What would be the price difference?

14

were HIDs, floodlamps and Xenon spotlights where the heat buildup can get so hot that a normal glass lens would be insufficient?

15

From the seller’s main page, it states “heat strengthening”. Don’t know what that means exactly.

16

they’re made from a new technology called Gorilla glass that’s much stronger than conventional hardened glass and therefore made thinner as well. Different properties altogether.

Check it out here: http://www.corninggorillaglass.com/the-science

The difference between toughened and tempered is whether it’s cooled slow or fast after heating. Tempered is cooled slow, toughened is cooled fast.

17

Toughened glass must be cut to size or pressed to shape before toughening and cannot be re-worked once toughened. Polishing the edges or drilling holes in the glass is carried out before the toughening process starts. Because of the balanced stresses in the glass, damage to the glass will eventually result in the glass shattering into thumbnail-sized pieces. The glass is most susceptible to breakage due to damage to the edge of the glass where the tensile stress is the greatest, but shattering can also occur in the event of a hard impact in the middle of the glass pane or if the impact is concentrated (for example, striking the glass with a point). Using toughened glass can pose a security risk in some situations because of the tendency of the glass to shatter completely upon hard impact rather than leaving shards in the window frame.[3]

The surface of tempered glass does exhibit surface waves caused by contact with flattening rollers, if it has been formed using this process. This waviness is a significant problem in manufacturing of thin film solar cells.[4]

18

You guys have sold me. It looks like I’ll be fine with the normal AR coated glass :slight_smile:

19

I'd like hardened glass, but it isn't worth it when it'll limit choices and prolong delivery times.

20

I don’t understand why over 1200 reads of the original post and nearly 300 reads here only nets 29 votes?? How many of the budget lights that claim AR lenses get to our doors with plain ol glass in em? Guess nobody cares for that extra ~10%.

Most of us are very interested in that $2.95 driver to hit 1000 lumens, but when the lens costs us 100 lumens we can’t figure out why it doesn’t seem to deliver the goods. With all things it’s the right combination, and the lens is an easy tweak to make. As a huge plus for me, the way it looks is awesome…as though there’s not a lens there and the emitter/reflector combination look awesome!

Oh well. Win some lose some I guess.

Thanks for caring enough to put all this effort into the effort O-L, really appreciate it.