Spanish ophthalmic technology company IOT claims to be the first to 3D print personalized progressive lenses, and says lenses made with its Light-Form process are already on sale to consumers. The company describes the method as forming a complete lens from a single flash of light in a few seconds, without the layer-by-layer build used in most additive manufacturing and without the generating and polishing steps required in conventional lens surfacing.
A single exposure, then finishing
Light-Form is based on stabilized frontal photopolymerization. Instead of building a lens gradually from a blank, the process cures the entire volume of the lens in one pass. IOT says this forming stage takes seconds. The lens is not finished at that point: unused resin is recovered to limit waste, the surface is hardened, and the lens is mapped before it is complete.
IOT argues that a new production method for personalized progressive lenses must reproduce the intended optical design precisely, not merely produce a recognizable shape. According to the company, Light-Form combines the design freedom of digital manufacturing with those optical requirements, allowing additive manufacturing to produce prescription lenses at commercial optical quality. IOT says the approach could also open more options for future lens architectures and individualized designs.
Company-reported resource savings
IOT says Light-Form is much lighter on resources than traditional lens production. Compared with conventional methods, it reports no water use in manufacturing, 90% less energy use and 76% less waste. The figures are company-reported and cover the manufacturing stage only.
Rethinking where lenses are made
IOT presents Light-Form as a way to redesign the production chain, not just a faster forming step. Larger installations could use several printing heads to raise output without taking up much floor space, according to the company. Further ahead, IOT envisions compact machines making custom lenses inside optical stores, putting production closer to the customer and reducing the need to hold stock.
Carolina Gago, COO of IOT, said the value lies in rethinking the production workflow. According to Gago, resin recovery and lower water and energy requirements address how resources are used, while compact equipment could support production closer to consumers. IOT says it is working to translate these capabilities into practical manufacturing options.
For optical laboratories, this could mean organizing capacity around local demand instead of relying only on centralized surfacing equipment. For wearers, IOT says the long-term benefit would be faster access to lenses made for them. The company says optical partners would still play the central role in vision correction and customer service.
Smart glasses and the wider additive optics field
IOT is also looking beyond conventional spectacles. 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 those devices thinner and lighter. IOT also suggests that custom optical shapes could eventually be useful in virtual reality.
The company is not the first to apply additive manufacturing to optics. Luxexcel built prescription lenses layer by layer in a material jetting process, printing single-vision, freeform and multifocal progressive designs, and it embedded waveguides into prescription lenses for smart glasses. Meta later acquired Luxexcel as part of its AR technology efforts. More recently, a University of Waterloo team developed a system that 3D prints custom contact lenses in roughly 20 minutes, raising the prospect of a patient being measured, fitted with a designed lens and leaving a clinic wearing it after one visit. The work earned a Gold Medal at the Shanghai International Exhibition of Inventions in June 2026.
These projects show additive manufacturing moving into optical production. IOT says its Light-Form personalized progressive lenses are already reaching consumers, but the broader shift it describes, from centralized surfacing to distributed, on-demand lens production, remains a direction of development, with in-store manufacturing and smart-glasses applications still on the roadmap.