Smart glasses supplier Vuzix and 3D-printing company Materalise have announced the start of their collaboration in the area of consumer smart eyewear, a market that is believed to be on the verge of mass adoption after years of development. As previously reported by our sister publication Eyewear Intelligence, the US-based tech company is ramping up its Ultralite OEM platform for consumer eyewear brands, with production scheduled to start as early as this year and deliveries in 2024.
The partnership with Materialise – the global market leader in 3D printed eyewear – will enable brands and OEM (original equipment manufacturer) companies in the technology, sports, entertainment and fashion sectors to launch functional, fashionable and affordable smart eyewear in as little as three months instead of eighteen months on average for injected products, the company said. Compared to other processes, other benefits of 3D printing also include enhanced design possibilities and the capability to work with smaller production series.
“The collaboration with Vuzix enables us to offer a one-stop-shop solution for smart glasses to third-party companies, and this marks a turning point for our smart eyewear division,” commented Alireza Parandian, Business Development Director at Materialise eyewear unit.
In parallel with its business with fashion eyewear brands, the Belgian-based company has already designed and produced 3D printed frames for smart eyewear companies, mostly located in Europe, such as Morrow Eyewear, Skugga and Lexilens, a brand of glasses helping dyslexic people to read. The smart glasses segment already accounts for between 20 and 25 percent of its eyewear business, Parandian noted.
However, as the most advanced smart eyewear projects are developed in the U.S., Jan-Willem Billiet, Materialise’s Head of Smart Eyewear, relocated to Silicon Valley one year ago. The company’s closer presence to smart eyewear developers notably resulted in an initial collaboration with Vuzix for the supply of 3D-printed titanium parts for frames used by surgeons, which require a high level of stiffness. This first project eventually led to a new and wider-reaching partnership.
The collaboration between the two companies will address two different segments of the market – on the one hand, tech companies with a smart eyewear roadmap and, on the other hand, eyewear manufacturers that want to enter the segment. Billiet sees three smart glasses’ categories that are mature for consumer adoption as they offer applications responding to actual needs: Sports eyewear for the display of live performance data, entertainment for videos or gaming, and live translation or augmented hearing.
Making an analogy with the mobile phone market development, Billiet told us that smart eyewear was still a “BlackBerry market” in the sense that the product has mostly been adopted for professional use until now – in manufacturing, logistics or medicine, for example. However, as the technology has progressed quickly in recent years, notably in terms of miniaturization, the ability to handle vision correction and 3D printing, “the market is now anticipating the arrival of the iPhone,” he added.
In earlier communications, Vuzix said that Ultralite OEM orders would be in the tens to hundreds of thousands of units range. Parandian said that while no additional 3D eyewear plant was currently scheduled by Materialise, the company would progressively increase its capacity and be flexible to match the uptick in expected orders.
Materialise currently operates two eyewear production sites, in Germany and Poland, and 3D printed over 300,000 pieces in 2022. In an interview with Eyewear Intelligence, Parandian explained that the company was aiming to at least triple its volumes in five years.
Photo: Vuzix
