(casual whistling)
(soft modern rock)
- Hello, I would like to welcome you
to the addition
to the Laramy-K Optician Works training center.
Today I'm gonna give you a quick overview
of a frame warmer that we have on loan from Hilco.
And I'm gonna give you 10 frame warmer tips
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'10 Frame Warmer Tips'.
Tip number one. Know your Gerbil.
When I was a kid this was way before the internet arrived.
If you went to the pet store, you got a pet,
you had a book that went with it.
And, there's a picture of the book.
'Know Your Gerbil', that's what I had at one point.
And they had every possible book.
'Know Your Iguana',
'Know Your Snake',
'Know Your Goldfish',
'Know Your Puppy'.
And I would encourage you to
know your frame warmer.
Spend a whole lot of time with it.
Really get to know it.
Figure out what settings work best for what.
Your gonna save yourself a whole lot of headaches.
So, know your gerbil, know your frame warmer.
Cold water and shrinkage.
What the heck do I mean by that?
Not all that common anymore
because edgers have come so far, they're so accurate.
But in the old days, when you used to cut a lens small.
You could actually take a real genuine Zyl frame,
heat the living heck out of it,
plunge it into ice-cold water
and you will get that eye wire to shrink
by almost a full millimeter in circumference.
Thus being able to be to pop in that lens
that you cut a little bit small.
Really old snake oil trick from the old timers
But it does work.
Number 3 is learn to concentrate.
In the past we had bead pans,
that's a picture of one there.
And they had good points and bad points.
Today almost everywhere you go
has the hot air blowers instead.
And one of the issues that came up
between the bead pans and the blowers
was that the blowers, was hard to find a way to concentrate
a very small area of heat onto the frame.
So you could make minute adjustments.
But, they have now overcome that
and I'm going to show you how to, in just a minute.
I'm melting.
There's an I'm melting good
and an I'm melting bad.
The I'm melting good.
A frame warmer is designed to heat a frame
to the point where it softens
so you can bend it, hold it in place, remove it,
let it cool and it will stay in position.
So eventually you just have to take it
after you know your frame warmer
a just do it attitude.
You're gonna to see, you're gonna hear
about frames that are called cold insert
usually it will be written on the demo lens
or maybe on the inside of the temple.
It may come with a card that says Cold Insert.
Only, yes and no.
Alright, I want everybody out there to be pretty careful
about cold inserts, frames in general.
(blizzard)
If you really lived in the North
I mean, if it really gets cold
you're in Minnesota or Maine, or you know.
And the UPS guy just drops off the package.
And you're tearing into 'em
and you pull that frame out and the thing is,
you know, two degrees.
So it's not unrealistic, alright.
It's been on the UPS truck for a couple of hours.
Let things warm up.
Let 'em get to room temperature
before you start tryin' to pop out lenses.
Even demo lenses, let things get to normal temperature.
If you have a cold insert frame
and it is a really, really cold day
and that frame is really, really cold
it's okay to warm it, warming is okay.
But you just don't want to heat it
'cause then it'll shrink up on you
and you'll ruin the frame.
And other thing about Winter is that
hot air blowers make great hand warmers.
Number 6. Asbestos Fingers.
There are some materials out there that you have got
the heat up so high, so much
in order to get a lens to pop into
yeah, you know, sometimes it hurts.
Ah, you may need, once in a while
to find somebody that's,
you know, been doing it a long time.
Maybe their thumbs are a bit tougher than yours.
Asbestos fingers, as we might say,
yeah, some materials really require a lot of heat.
Number 7, says, "Learn How to Count".
I've always feeled that this is the best method
once you know your frame warmer
You'll start to learn how long
you may need to hold something in it
in order to have, it do what you need it to do.
If I need to pop a plastic lens into a plastic frame
and I know my frame warmer.
I may need to do a count of ten, 5?
Who knows?
You know, depending how long the frame warmer is.
So practice that.
Put it in,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
take it out.
Pop that lens in. Practice.
Number 8 says, "What is Done, is Done".
The bad melting...
True story, I used to work lens crafters.
The store had been open about 10 years before I got there.
It was a super crazy busy store.
All the frame warmers were used several hours each day
and they were pretty old.
You could take the frame, put it in there,
have a nice, long talk with someone
and then take it out and make you adjustments.
Well, it was the year that we opened
a whole bunch of new stores,
ended up at one of the new stores,
took the first pair of glasses for dispensing,
put it in the frame warmer
and I'm taking to the gentleman like,
"oh yeah, aha, hmmm, oh sure, aha."
Looked down and I actually had 2 different piece in my hand.
Yes, you can actually melt them that bad.
What's done, is done.
If you do mess something up when you're using a frame warmer
just admit it, you can't put it back together.
You can't use the, cold water and shrink method.
You just gotta get a new frame.
Number 9 says, "Keep it Moving".
Even on those minute, concentrated ones
never stop moving the frame.
Always have a little bit of motion to it, always.
Side to side, up and down, circles.
Whatever it might be.
You're gonna save yourself a lot of headaches
and avoid blisters, burning in damage to the frame.
Number 10 says, "Bling and Materials".
If you have a new frame and you are not sure
about how to adjust it, how much heat to use.
If in doubt, Ask!
Check online, call the frame company
and simply, ask them,
"What is the proper method?".
Let's head over the the bench.
Let me give you an overview of the Hilco frame warmer.
Just like the pupillometer.
This is an overview, this is not a review.
I would never review a product
until I have used it for at least 6 months,
more likely a year
and used it in every possible setting.
Alright, this particular one
2 8 7 8 0 1 H
is a temp master jet plus, in black.
And these go for $350.
Current Hilco Catalog.
High quality aluminum body
that does not get hot due to intermittent airflow patterns.
Vertical orientation saves bench space
and allows easy access for adjustments.
It's light, quiet efficient
and includes a heat concentrator.
And it's ETL listed,
which I'm assuming is a European standard.
Electronic heat regulation.
Cold air option.
Which is one of the things I just talked about.
And heat concentrator extender.
I'm not sure I'm
blown away by the design.
I think, you know,
It's always a personal choice
whether you want to use this in front of people or not.
A lot of places will have them right there
at the dispensing table.
So when you sit down, you're talking with the guys,
we're doing adjustments, using it.
I think so much of that depends
on how much of the stuff that you do
is new versus old.
If you do a lot of adjustments on older stuff
then you're gonna want your frame warmer
right there, at hand for you.
If you're working mostly with new stuff
you can usually bend almost all of that
without ever having to heat anything.
So, this may be kept back in the lab
rather than right there, on the dispensing table.
It does, in fact, have an adjustable range
and you can see there.
It's kind of cool that the light actually changes
as you turn that
It's kind of neat.
It goes from green, to orange, to red.
That's kind of cool.
Alright, I'm gonna set that straight up and down.
Right absolutely dead center.
Let's see.
It's just startin', I can just...
That's pretty good.
Right dead center.
Which of course, is a good place to start anything, right?
This has a heat focusing device, or a flip-over.
Umm, I played with this for a while
and I actually got in contact with Hilco.
Asked them if they had a specific use for it.
They sent me a picture, that looks...
I'll show it. There it is.
Show you that, it looks like that.
So, you can kind of concentrate the heat a ltttle bit more.
You get, what would be great`
for popping lenses in.
Could certainly use it to concentrate the heat on
temple end, that would work well.
Okay, then I said,
We were talking about that ability
to concentrate heat in a very small area.
Let's say... umm.
And we will get into this
when we actually get into how to adjust plastic frames
with a frame warmer.
If you only wanted to adjust this, you know.
The chassis end, for instance.
This doesn't do that very well.
But, if you start adding these
little gizmos and concentrators,
you can, literally rest that in there
and super crazy focus that amount.
And this even comes with an additional piece
which makes it even more concentrated.
And I guess, I'm not exactly sure again.
They don't have picture of this thing in use.
I guess you could to that with it.
And we'll get into all that
when you get into how to actually adjust frames.
Plastic frames using a frame warmer.
But, I just wanted to give you that overview
of the Hilco TempMaster.
Thank you so much for watching.
I will see you again next week.
(casual whistling)