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 within a few seconds, and the company says lenses made this way are already on sale to consumers. The method involves no layer-by-layer build, and the lens is produced without the generating and polishing steps that conventional surfacing relies on.
The announcement positions additive manufacturing less as a faster way to shape a lens blank and more as a different way to organize lens production altogether. IOT describes the change in terms of workflow, resources and where manufacturing happens, alongside the forming step itself.
How the Light-Form process works
Light-Form is based on stabilized frontal photopolymerization. Rather than shaping a lens gradually from a blank, light cures the entire volume of the lens in a single pass, and this 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.
IOT stresses that a production method for personalized progressive lenses must do more than produce a recognizable shape. It has to reproduce the intended optical design precisely. The company says Light-Form combines the design freedom of digital manufacturing with these demanding optical requirements, so that additive manufacturing can yield prescription lenses at commercial optical quality. IOT adds that the approach opens more options for future lens architectures and individualized solutions.
“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, try out new lens architectures and run more flexible manufacturing.
Resource use and a redesigned production chain
IOT says the method is considerably 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. The company notes that these figures cover the manufacturing stage only, a scope that matters when processes are compared.
Beyond the forming step, IOT presents the technology as a way to redesign the production chain. Larger installations could use several printing heads to raise output without taking up much floor space. Further ahead, the company envisions compact machines making custom lenses inside optical stores, putting production next to the customer and reducing 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 local demand instead of relying only on centralized surfacing equipment. For wearers, IOT says the long-term benefit is faster access to lenses made for them. The company adds that optical partners would still play the central role in vision correction and customer service.
Earlier approaches to printed optics
Conventional prescription lenses tend to be manufactured through a process of around 30 steps, which requires large inventories and yields high wastage. Luxexcel was an early example of a different route: it built lenses layer-by-layer in a material jetting process, and its platform could print single vision and freeform lenses as well as multifocal progressive designs. The company also embedded waveguides into prescription lenses for smart glasses, the same direction IOT is now exploring, and Meta later acquired Luxexcel 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 a single clinic visit. The work earned a Gold Medal at the Shanghai International Exhibition of Inventions in June 2026.
Smart glasses and the limits of the claims
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 could make such devices thinner and lighter. The company also suggests that custom optical shapes could eventually be useful in virtual reality.
Several points bound these claims. The performance and resource figures are the company's own and cover manufacturing only; the lenses are described as already on sale, but the material offers no independent verification of optical quality, yield or cost at scale. Finishing steps remain part of the process, and the in-store and multi-head production concepts are presented as possibilities rather than installed systems. The comparison with Luxexcel and Waterloo shows additive manufacturing entering optical production, but each effort differs in method and readiness.
Taken together, IOT is presenting Light-Form as a change to how lens production is organized, not only a new way to form lenses, with local, demand-based production and in-store manufacturing as the longer-term direction. The company says its personalized progressive lenses are already reaching consumers, a milestone that, if borne out in practice, would mark additive manufacturing's arrival in prescription optics.