Spanish ophthalmic technology company IOT says it has become the first to 3D print personalized progressive lenses, using a process that forms a complete lens with a single flash of light in a few seconds. The company says lenses made this way are already on sale to consumers. The claim matters because progressive lenses are not simple shapes: they must reproduce a prescribed optical design across a complex surface, not merely look like a lens.
A faster forming step, not a finished lens
Light-Form is based on stabilized frontal photopolymerization. Instead of building a lens layer by layer or grinding a blank, the process cures the entire volume in one pass. IOT says the forming stage takes seconds. Finishing remains: unused resin is recovered, the surface is hardened and the lens is mapped. The company also says the method skips the generating and polishing steps on which conventional surfacing depends. That distinction separates Light-Form from material-jetting approaches that add material incrementally.
Resource use is central to IOT's case. Compared with conventional methods, the company reports no water use in manufacturing, 90% less energy and 76% less waste. Those figures cover the manufacturing stage only, a boundary that matters when assessing the full life cycle of a lens. The company also links resin recovery to waste reduction. Without independent verification, the numbers should be read as company-reported comparisons rather than established industry averages.
The optical requirement is the harder test. IOT argues that a new production method for personalized progressive lenses must precisely reproduce the intended design, not just produce a recognizable shape. It says Light-Form combines the design freedom of digital manufacturing with those demands, allowing additive manufacturing to produce prescription lenses at commercial optical quality. Whether that quality holds across prescriptions, materials and production volumes is not documented; the claim is the company's.
José Alonso, co-founder and CINO, frames the work as a change in how ophthalmic lenses are made. He says Light-Form shows how scientific research can alter production, and that pairing optical precision with a new method could help optical partners create personalized products, test new lens architectures and run more flexible manufacturing. The language is prospective: partners could gain options, but no independent production data or partner results are presented.
The production-chain argument
IOT's broader argument is that the production chain, not just the forming step, should be redesigned. Larger installations could use several printing heads to raise output without consuming much floor space, according to the company. Further ahead, it envisions compact machines making custom lenses inside optical stores, putting production next to the customer and reducing the need to hold stock. These are described as possibilities, not installed systems.
Carolina Gago, COO, says the value lies in rethinking the production workflow. Resin recovery and lower water and energy requirements address resource use, while compact equipment could support production closer to consumers. She says the company is working to translate these capabilities into practical manufacturing options. For optical laboratories, that could mean organizing capacity around local demand rather than relying only on centralized surfacing equipment. For wearers, IOT says the long-term benefit would be faster access to lenses made for them; optical partners would still handle vision correction and customer service.
The roadmap extends beyond spectacles. IOT says one option under development is printing prescription optics directly onto waveguides and flat substrates used in smart glasses and augmented reality headsets, which could make devices thinner and lighter. It also suggests custom optical shapes could eventually be useful in virtual reality. These are development directions, not products described as commercially available. They do, however, show why a lens-forming method might matter beyond conventional eyewear.
What the comparison shows
Other additive manufacturing projects provide context. Luxexcel was an early example in prescription eyewear. Conventional prescription lenses tend to require around 30 steps, large inventories and high wastage. Luxexcel instead built lenses layer by layer in a material-jetting process and could print single-vision, freeform and multifocal progressive designs. It also embedded waveguides into prescription lenses for smart glasses, a direction IOT is now exploring; Meta later acquired Luxexcel. More recently, a University of Waterloo team developed a system that 3D prints custom contact lenses in roughly 20 minutes, raising the prospect of measuring, designing and dispensing a lens in one clinic visit. The work earned a Gold Medal at the Shanghai International Exhibition of Inventions in June 2026.
IOT is presenting Light-Form as a change to how lens production is organized, not only a new way to form lenses. It plans to replace reliance on conventional surfacing infrastructure with production set up around local demand and sees in-store manufacturing as a possible way to bring personalized lenses closer to the wearer. The commercial claim is narrower and more concrete: personalized progressive lenses made with Light-Form are already reaching consumers. The open questions are independent validation of optical performance, the economics of resin recovery and finishing, and whether compact in-store systems can meet laboratory standards. On the evidence presented, Light-Form is a notable production concept with a commercial first step, not yet a proven replacement for conventional lens manufacturing.