- Hello. I would like to welcome you
to the Laramy-K Opticianworks training center,
where today we are going to learn how to properly
mark a demo lens so that we can set the fitting across
of a progressive lens in the proper place
so everything works like it should.
(upbeat music)
Marking for the placement
of a progressive fitting height using the tick method.
And I am sure that you have never heard
of this method before, because, well,
I've pretty much just made it up.
It is almost the exact same process as taking an OC height,
which I think we did two weeks ago,
or doing a manual PD, if you will,
but there's some subtle differences.
Because for the progressive fitting height,
wow, we've gotta be really accurate.
We are gonna hit the bench and we're going to mark, look,
choose, and tick,
or we're going to mark, look,
decide whether we need to adjust up or down,
and only then take the glasses back from our customer.
Keeping in mind that we are always looking for the magic 18.
There is the video about that.
Probably one of the most important videos
that we ever have done.
17, okay.
16, okay.
19, okay.
20, okay.
Magic 18, watch the other video,
not the place to go into, all the reasons behind that.
A progressive fitting height
is a progressive fitting height.
A progressive is not a lined bifocal.
You can't move it around.
Consumers, if you hear an optician say,
"Oh, we'll just set it higher or set it low."
They don't know what they're talking about, okay?
A progressive has got to be fit exactly
as I'm about to show you.
A couple little tiny exceptions that we'll talk about.
Forgetting a progressive fitting height,
it is either an electronic measuring device,
the preferred method today, most accurate possible,
or the dot method.
Any other attempt at trying to mark
for a progressive fitting height, holding up a PD stick,
or some pen light thing, just run the other way.
If someone's trying to train you that way, smile,
nod your head, and do it this way.
Kind of like what I talked about with straight tops,
there is a great rule of thumb.
Of course, there are exceptions.
Generally, for a progressive,
you are looking for a fitting height
between 15 and 25 millimeters and almost always
above half the B.
If you do not have those things in a routine job,
it is a huge red flag.
You're probably a newbie,
probably reading the millimeter PD stick the wrong way.
You're probably on the wrong side of the five or something.
If you see that, double check it.
If you folks that are doing finishing work,
and at the red flag, you might catch a mistake
before you go running an expensive pair of progressives.
Think I heard Consie, the customer, pull up.
She'll be entering here in just a moment.
So let me show you exactly what it is
that I am gonna looking for when I sit down with her.
What I am trying to dot is the center
of her pupil exactly as shown.
If you are consistently too high,
you have three, four remakes with them being too high,
some people will dot the bottom of the pupil, as shown,
rather than the center.
That is exactly what you're doing.
That is a progressive lens.
Those are your paint markings for layout
and finishing work.
That fitting cross, dead center in the center of that pupil.
I mentioned that there are kind of,
sort of exceptions to the fitting high, fitting low piece.
You can kind of, sort of,
it's okay to fit a little bit high in + powers.
If you're right on the edge of 17 and 18, go with 18
if that person is all +.
A beautiful rhyme, fitting low, well, that's just a no.
There is no reason you would ever deliberately choose
to place the fitting cross lower than where it should be
in a progressive.
If you are getting into that + or -, doesn't matter,
high or low, you should be looking
at an office progressive design.
You're trying to do something
that an ordinary progressive lens can't do,
and it ain't gonna work.
There are some other methods to get yourself
in a position to put a dot on a frame, or a lens.
We will cover those, sunglass, seg gauges, tape,
that kind of stuff in a week or so.
It's coming, so don't send me an email quite yet.
Back to that video again.
Fitting height, minimum fitting height,
corridor, corridor length, progression length.
Those are all terminology of progressive design.
They are not the same thing.
Watch the other video.
Turns out that I was wrong.
That was not Consie, the customer, arriving.
That was the mail.
So I've got a moment to do just a little bit
of housekeeping here.
A couple of weeks ago, we did the video on taking PDs,
and there was a little feedback on social media
about the different kinds of pupilometers
and sometimes the errors that can occur when using them.
Look, you're going to use what you are provided with
where you work.
There are all different kinds of pupilometers.
You may work for Dave's Discount Lenses
where they have 50 stores
and they bought 50 of them direct from China.
That's what you're gonna use
because that's what you're provided with.
If you've been working someplace
that has an electronic measuring device
and you switch jobs and you say,
"Hey, where's the EMD?
And they hand you a marker.
Well, then you better learn how to use a marker,
which is exactly what we're about to do.
Basically, what we're gonna do here is what we did a couple
of weeks ago when we took an OC height.
And in some ways,
the accuracy of what we're about to do is much,
much more important.
But in some ways,
the steps that we're gonna take
to do it are gonna seem a little,
well, maybe less thorough, which is kind of weird.
And we'll think it through that.
If you pop those glasses off for me,
and we're gonna put this pair on, your new one,
when we are taking our fitting height for our progressive,
we are going to do our pre-adjust,
just like we did for the OC Heights and the straight tops.
But in this case,
I'm gonna make sure it's not riding up on her temples,
on her ears.
I need those nosepads in the as worn position.
This is the case where I'm actually gonna work
with her a little bit.
If one of 'em doesn't look right,
if it looks like it's sitting down or up,
I don't want that neutral position
that we talked about with the straight top.
Here, they need to be in the right place.
'Cause if I move them after the fact,
that progressive's gonna move within the frame
and she's not gonna be able to see the way she should.
So I've got my pre-adjust done.
She's good and level.
Nosepads are in a good place.
I'm gonna tell her how to hold her head.
And I guess, in some ways, I kind of feel bad.
I kind of feel like I kind of glossed over this a little bit
when we were doing it for OC Heights
So let's talk a little bit more about that.
If you are a newbie,
if you are not comfortable telling people what to do,
this is something you might need to work at a little bit.
You might need to work at it with your friends
and family at home or certainly with your coworkers.
Listen to what they say.
When I am working with her and I need her to move her head
and be in a certain place, I need to tell her,
"Could you lift your chin up a little bit for me?
And can move your head just a little, good, down."
Okay, she doesn't have to this, but this...
Okay, rehearse this, all right?
Chin up for me.
Chin up a little bit, good.
Chin down.
A little this way, a little that way.
All right, guys, you get it.
Okay, do it.
If she's doing this thing, say,
"Hey, just kind of shake your head out for me.
Good, just looking at me.
Chin up just a tiny bit.
Perfect.
That is what I'm looking for."
We talked a whole lot about how important it was
that we're level and we're on the same plane
and I've got the chair that moves
and I'm being careful with holding my arm a certain way
and looking.
That really is important stuff.
But after you have done a progressive fitting height
this way, manually if you will, 50 times, 100 times,
it becomes kinda like what I talk
about with you a lot, visualization.
This should almost become more of a feeling for you
than a process or, I guess, that would be the word for it.
When I do this, in a second,
and I come in and I dot and I dot and I look,
I'm gonna know if I got it right
after I've done it enough times.
You'll get a feeling for this.
Just practice it.
I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna put my mark.
And this is where we're gonna talk about the tick,
all right?
I'm gonna come in.
just looking, right, straight at me.
Good.
I am dotting her pupil's center.
Now, of course a whole lot of things could happen right now.
I could have them both absolutely perfect.
- Ooh.
- And I'd just be completely happy and thrilled
with the dots and where they, and say, "Very good."
And I take her glasses.
I may look at her,
and I say, "Wow, I really like that right one."
This is where my tick comes in.
I'm just gonna do this.
So I remember, once I take the glasses off
and we do something else or I get distracted,
which one of those I wanted to capture.
The other thing that can happen is, so you're looking at me,
and this is another thing we need to talk about,
the importance of really looking at her, okay?
I'm not someone given to real, heavy eye contact.
It's not at thing I do.
But this, I've got to look.
And folks, again, rehearse this.
If you're not comfortable, not used to it.
And I'm not looking at her.
I'm not looking at the glasses.
I'm not thinking, "Oh, those are so pretty," okay?
I am looking at my dot.
I am looking at the center of her pupil,
and I am seeing if where I marked is where I want.
The other possibilities, like say,
wow, they're both beautiful, perfect, level,
but they're both low.
Then, I can simply record that in my head, say,
"All right, that looks good.
Thank you."
Take them from her.
Take out my PD stick, measure down, and let's say I got 24.
In my head, they were both low.
Gonna go 20, 25 looks good, 26.
Whatever it might be in my head
rather than doing this and back on and going, "Oh, no,"
and wiping them off and re-dotting.
Not a great thing to do with your customer.
Kind of drops that confidence level.
Learn how to do this.
And again, you can think it in your head and mark.
Now, when do we do different heights?
My rule of thumb is if I can look at my customer
and I can physically see that one eye is higher or lower
than the other, that is when I would use different heights.
If you have an electronic measuring device of some kind
and it captures it
and it's more than a millimeter difference,
generally, people will use different heights.
Two is probably not a bad rule of thumb either.
Once you get it to two or three,
then you use different heights from each eye.
Last piece of this.
I have my customer and she's wearing them.
And I dot, and I dot.
I'm very happy with what I've done.
I said, "Okay, take those back.
Thank you."
I'm going to take these, and I'm gonna measure,
and I've got my own glasses on so I can see what I'm doing,
and I get 15.
Uh-oh, right.
You've watched the other video by now, I hope.
If not, there it is for the fourth time, I think,
in this video.
A super crazy important one to watch.
I am looking for that magic 18.
Are there lenses made for 15?
Well kind of, yes.
Not the place to go into that stuff.
You are looking for the magic 18.
If you do not have 18, 19, 20, you have got to learn to say
to your customer, "Wow, I'm sorry.
It's just not gonna work in this frame."
There's no magic pixie dust, folks, right?
There's no lens out there in the world
that's gonna work at a magic 11 fitting height
in a progressive.
You're gonna have a costly remake,
you're gonna have an unhappy customer,
possible loss of literally thousands of dollars
over the years when she just starts going somewhere else.
Worth repeating again, folks.
Yes, if she is 40 years old, it's her first pair.
She's got a lot of accommodation left.
You can throw anything at her and she's gonna be happy.
Wearing that little, tiny frame.
Five years down the road when her adds are 250
and that doesn't work anymore,
well, you try explaining to her why.
Don't set yourself up for failure.
So that is the technique for taking a, shall we say,
manual fitting height for a progressive.
As I just mentioned, using your electronic measuring device,
of course, is the preferred technique.
- Now I know what you meant.
'Cause I didn't know what you're always going on about 18.
So that's what you mean,
'cause there's just not enough space for everything to work.
- Well, it's not your head.
- It's the eyes. Think about your eye,
your eye moving in the lens like this.
- It doesn't have enough space.
- It's just literally not there.
Or you're trying to spread...
If you're young, your add's only one.
So you're spreading that one out over,
let's say 15 millimeters.
And so you spread that out over that.
And that one goes from zero to one, roughly in your add.
And as you need to read something up close,
you lift your head.
And it's pretty gentle
'cause it's only building in little tiny steps
and you're only on this little bit of one.
Now, imagine Wendy Cake go from 1 to 250,
a full, another diopter and a half of power,
and you're squeezing it into this 15 or 12 millimeters.
You can barely move your eyes or your head
and you're gonna be jumping up
and the page is gonna be like this on you.
It's not a good thing.
- Oh no, that's not good.
- No, no.
I mean, some people are fine with it.
It happens.
Sure, absolutely.
But overall, especially I say if you're a newbie
or something, you don't wanna you start getting
into that stuff if you can avoid it.
- All right.
- A good sidebar.
I think we might leave that, I think.
Thank you so much for watching.
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And make certain that every progressive lens
in your life comes from Laramy-K
I will see you again next week.