Hello, my name is David Kitayama; I am an optical Technician with
over 35 years experience. Welcome to my Blog where I will discuss the latest
optical news and trends. Being the National Training manager for Dia North
America, I will also discuss the benefits of owning a Dia Lens Edging System
for your Lab. I am open to questions and comments so please feel free to
contact me.
A Little bit of History:
I started in the optical industry
in a small wholesale lab with only two edgers in 1977. I did the ordering of
the generated lenses, cutting and edging and even the final inspection of all
jobs before going out to the doctors retail offices.
Then started working for a large wholesale lab running 4 edger’s two AIT Mark 5’s and one AIT Mark 4 and a Dimelp Edgemaster running them simultaneously doing about 120 jobs a day 5 days a week. Then I have worked for various retail optometrist offices doing the cut and edging and even dispensing frames and doing contact lens fittings and sales.
So I have the experience of doing the full spectrum of the optical trade other than doing the surfacing of lenses. With that comes the experience of knowing what is needed from a Patternless edger and the supporting company when my edger is off warranty and I need to get it up and running again. I have committed myself to take great care in supporting my customers that I have sold an edger to and with my website www.dkoptical.net has opened so many other doors of support and sales.
I hope to be able to help each and every one of the customers of past and current. I have an excellent track record for customer service and my response time when customers call me is unrivaled whether they need phone support or for me to come in for any questions they may have, or when they need parts or whatever their needs. If needed I give my customers a 2 day complete training maintenance of the edger going beyond the regular maintenance training so that the problems will not come along if they do as I have trained them!
Within my 35 plus years experience I have worked for AIT Industries, Briot, Topcon, Novamatic Systems and Vision Systems. My responsibilities involved Installation & Training Patternless Edging Systems, on and off warranty repairs, technical support and annual maintenance visits, for Wholesale Optical Lab’s, Kaiser Permanente Hospital’s, State Prisons and Retail Optometrist offices, my territory covering the entire Western United States.
I have worked on most every edger on today’s market I can work on your old edger so you can have another edger to sell or use to your advantage also with this experience I know the other edger’s and the other companies that sell the edger’s so I know what comes with purchasing an edger is not only what the edger can do for your company but what can the company do when I need them are they going to see me in a day or two or will it be a week or two?
Do they expect me to sign a contract that only allows them to work on my edger when it goes out of warranty do they honor the parts needed to repair my edger to be returned if I do not need them and have a tech that is not from their company work on my edger? Things they do not tell you when you purchase an edger and you find out when it is too late and you’re stuck with higher repair costs and contracts that bind your company.
David Kitayama:
A Little bit of History:
I started in the optical industry
in a small wholesale lab with only two edgers in 1977. I did the ordering of
the generated lenses, cutting and edging and even the final inspection of all
jobs before going out to the doctors retail offices. Then started working for a large wholesale lab running 4 edger’s two AIT Mark 5’s and one AIT Mark 4 and a Dimelp Edgemaster running them simultaneously doing about 120 jobs a day 5 days a week. Then I have worked for various retail optometrist offices doing the cut and edging and even dispensing frames and doing contact lens fittings and sales.
So I have the experience of doing the full spectrum of the optical trade other than doing the surfacing of lenses. With that comes the experience of knowing what is needed from a Patternless edger and the supporting company when my edger is off warranty and I need to get it up and running again. I have committed myself to take great care in supporting my customers that I have sold an edger to and with my website www.dkoptical.net has opened so many other doors of support and sales.
I hope to be able to help each and every one of the customers of past and current. I have an excellent track record for customer service and my response time when customers call me is unrivaled whether they need phone support or for me to come in for any questions they may have, or when they need parts or whatever their needs. If needed I give my customers a 2 day complete training maintenance of the edger going beyond the regular maintenance training so that the problems will not come along if they do as I have trained them!
Within my 35 plus years experience I have worked for AIT Industries, Briot, Topcon, Novamatic Systems and Vision Systems. My responsibilities involved Installation & Training Patternless Edging Systems, on and off warranty repairs, technical support and annual maintenance visits, for Wholesale Optical Lab’s, Kaiser Permanente Hospital’s, State Prisons and Retail Optometrist offices, my territory covering the entire Western United States.
I have worked on most every edger on today’s market I can work on your old edger so you can have another edger to sell or use to your advantage also with this experience I know the other edger’s and the other companies that sell the edger’s so I know what comes with purchasing an edger is not only what the edger can do for your company but what can the company do when I need them are they going to see me in a day or two or will it be a week or two?
Do they expect me to sign a contract that only allows them to work on my edger when it goes out of warranty do they honor the parts needed to repair my edger to be returned if I do not need them and have a tech that is not from their company work on my edger? Things they do not tell you when you purchase an edger and you find out when it is too late and you’re stuck with higher repair costs and contracts that bind your company.
Who is Dia?:
As they say a picture is worth a thousand words. Takubo/Dia is number one in sales in all of Asia surpassing all of the competitors this means a lot and it will not be long for it to duplicate this in the U.S.! As people find out why this is so in Asia. For space is a factor as is consumption of electricity and how long and how easy it is to work on the Dia edger's.The Dia E Series edger's has a very small footprint smaller than it's competitors so space is not a problem, consumption of electricity please read the last paragraph under "Dia E Series Features" below for details, and just check out the easy touch screen on my website you just clamp your lens in and then start from the left bottom Icon and answer the drop up features and go to the next one to the right one by one and press start so easy to use and so easy to train any optician how to operate it!
Takubo Dia has been in business for 60 years and they started in the industry working along with Novamatic Systems in Los Angeles CA manufacturing all of their equipment. Back in the early years of the optical trade and even to today you could go into any optical shop and find something sold by Novamatic Systems like a digital frame tracer/pattern maker, polisher or hand edger well guess what the Takubo Dia factory has made all of Novamatic Systems equipment from the very start!!
So when people say they never heard of Dia, I tell them “yes you have” under the name of Novamatic Systems.With the distributors changing hands there has been no real consistent technical support, but with my efforts as a technical support specialist for Dia, things have changed and will continue to do so. The demand for better service gave birth to DKOptical.net
Things started to change about three years ago with the introduction of the Dia E 1000 Patternless System. Another deciding factor is Takubo Dia has their own factory designing and manufacturing all of their equipment and the components and computer boards that is part of the intricate design of their equipment including the wheels.
Now think of the quality control that goes with having your own factory. I have never worked for any other company that will take the advice from a technician and incorporate that into their own equipment!! NEVER!
That is until I came to work with Takubo Dia!! And that says everything to me and the optical edger industry!! This is the best edger anyone can purchase for retail or wholesale labs and I can back it up with the Dia E 1000 Patternless System!!The time it takes to cut a Polycarbonate, CR 39 or Trivex lens is faster than many of our competitor’s edger’s.
Dia E Series Features:
This is an edger that can do
what no other edger can do at lower prices than that of our competitors. You
can take a lens that has been run thru its complete cycle and mistakenly took
off the block too soon because you forgot the groove, safety bevel, polish,
bevel or groove needed to be a little closer to the front of the lens or the
groove needed to be a wider groove to fit a metal frame with a groove. Well with any other edger you cannot add these features but with the Dia E 1000 just take a block by hand and put it onto the lens and add any of these features letting the edger’s internal memory do the work flawlessly.
Want to have an 8 base groove or bevel on a 4 base lens no problem! Tired of the fumes from Hi Index or Polycarbonate lenses? Well the Dia E 1000 comes with a free Deodorizer and a free $3,000.00 software for modifying the “A” or “B” measurement of any rimlon or drill mounted lens.
For example you have a lens with a small “B” and you need to put a progressive lens into the frame, you can easily modify the “B” to accommodate the progressive lens and when I say easily I mean that you can go to the edger’s screen and take your PD stick and measure the “B” of the modified lens and measure it right there on the edger’s screen.
This is an on sized image of your patients lenses, yes both the right and left lenses are imaged right there on the edger’s screen!
Do you cut 6 to 8 base lenses in high wrapped frames and want an edger that can accommodate these frames well look no further! Most other edger’s cannot do a proper bevel on a 8 base lens because their hide a bevel does not follow the front contour of the 8 base lens instead only following the Lens Measuring Units probe and giving a second grade hide a bevel that has more of the lens sticking out on the nasal and temple of the lenses cosmetically not acceptable.
You do not want a lens with a 4 base bevel or groove on an 8 base frame and have to distort your frame to accommodate the fit of the frame onto your patients.The Dia E 1000 comes with a 10 degree bevel wheel that completely accommodates your 8 base lenses for not only does it cut the lens so it will fit into your "Hi Wrapped" (8 Base) frame properly but because of the 10 degree bevel that bevels a Hi Power lens so that the finished lens will come out thinner at the temple because of this special bevel.
Also the 10 degree bevel gives you a full bevel, I’m sure you all remember the larger bevels from the older edgers so that when you cut a plastic frame the lens stays into the eye wire without it popping out especially in the heat of summer. This was because of the larger hide a bevel’s peak of the Vee it would sit completely into the bottom of the frames Vee. Well today’s hide a bevels are smaller for cosmetic reasons so when you put this smaller vee into a plastic frame the lenses will always tend to pop out sooner than later!
And it even has a special mode for cutting super hydrophobic lenses with AR coatings so they will not slip and thus effecting your profit margin.With the Dia E 1000 edger you have that same re-edge mode but it also has the ability to add a polish, groove, safety bevel or even move the groove or bevel forward or to the back! On every re-edge mode! But remember even if you took off the block the Dia E 1000 can add any forgotten feature with ease.
With its standard 3 year parts 1 year labor warranty Takubo Dia has the utmost honor that this edger will last you many years to come. Having a 600 Watt and a 5 Amp system as other systems have an 800 Watt and a 15 – 20 Amp system just think about it, less amperage and wattage less heat is generated to your components and computer boards so as with any component with less power needed for the functions each component will last much longer than its counter component needing more power because more power generates more heat.
It Adds Up to Huge Savings:
That is the difference between our system and the other systems out there (Lower power consumption and lower amperage!) Plus our regular re-edge mode and the internal memory being able to re-block a lens and add a feature (No More wasted lenses just because you forgot to add that safety bevel, polish, moving the bevel forward or to the back or even sized down) that was forgotten is irreplaceable in terms of how long your system will last you and the profit margin savings!Wholesale Labs Ready:
The on sized imaged touch screen is designed from a cash registers touch screen that is designed to run 24/7 we have not replaced one yet! The Dia E 1000 is WHOLESALE LAB ready! VCA Compliant and Barcode Reader and Industrial designed edger enabled with memory for saving jobs that you run over and over again and you can even see the shapes right there on the edger’s screen.The Dia E Series edger’s come with the necessary calibration tools you will need for your edger it will save you money from needing a tech to come in to fix the axis or sizing for Dia E Series edger’s calibration tools can fix these issues with just a no charge phone call to me so I can walk you thru a calibration on that issue you may be having because of a spike in your power going to your edger from a storm or from any other source that causes a spike in electrical power. Running the Dia E 1000 24 hours a day 7 days a week is what it is designed to do! It has been designed to be an industrial edger with an industrial safety bevel grooving motor and more!
Vision Expo News:
I attended the latest Vision Expo's in Las Vegas and New York and had a great response for my new website (dkoptical.net). I generated responses from around the globe and Takubo Dia has been contacted by one of the largest optical companies in the industry and one in Canada as well that are very interested in using our Dia E 1000 edger’s.
Spread the word about Dia. Please call and make an appointment with me to come in and take a look at the Dia E 1000 I can come in and demo it at your office.
Customer Satisfaction:
All of this is about customer satisfaction no customer wants to deal with lenses that are popping out of their frame or the cosmetic features of their lenses just does not look right because too much of the lens is coming out to the front of their frame or only on the nasal or temple of their lenses are coming out too much.Nor does the operator want to have to tell his boss that he ruined a lens and has to purchased a new one because he took the block off to soon and forgot to add a feature that Dia E 1000 could have easily fixed and in the end save them time and money and even a patient no one wants to lose a customer! Due to operator mistakes and you know when it does happen it will happen on a Hi Index Progressive lens with AR Coating with the patient on his or her way to pick it up!!
The lens will cost you over a hundred dollars per lens and losing a customer is the worst case scenario that could happen and this does and has happened at one time or another to most all opticians! At the end of the cutting cycle of any lens on any edger on the market you always have a "Dia only" re-edge mode where you can resize the lens to a smaller diameter also add any features you may have forgotten to add at the beginning of the cutting cycle like polish, groove or even move the bevel or groove position.
One week before Vision Expo a component of our edging system went down. With Topcon no longer manufacturing or supporting edger’s we were face with replacement. David Kitayama has done service work over the years for us and we have known him to be extremely knowledgeable, professional, and familiar with most of the edger’s on the market. He suggested the Dia E 1000 and offered a very competitive price. We did our homework by looking at other edgers by Santinelli, AIT and others.
We concluded that other edger systems not only did not stack up to the features, capability, and ease of use, but were significantly more costly. David assured us there was not a better edger on the market for our office. We could not be happier with the choice. We are able to provide our patients with precise lenses that fit and look beautifully in every frame we now provide. David, as always delivers on his promises. He did a thorough job training my lab staff after the install, and has continued to be very responsive to provide assistance when questions or problems (minor) arise. Thanks, David for your recommendation and superlative service
Sincerely;
Dr. Bruce Lucas
Woodland Hills CA 91364818 348-1266
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Dr. Javier Quintero-Chica O.D.
David,
I have had significant experience with many equipment sales
people and "Authorized Equipment Repair Departments" and you are by
far the most honest, most knowledgeable service technician I have experienced.
You have the brains, knowledge and resources to fix these complicated pieces of
equipment. I still can't believe you knew how to fix my Santinelli edger and
Takubomatic edger better than the "Authorized repair technicians."
From now on I will only deal with you for service of my equipment. I am so glad
I found you. I thought there was no honorable, knowledgeable equipment service
people left. Thank You!!
Sincerely,
Dr. Javier Quintero-Chica O.D.
Q Optical
845 876-2433Rhinebeck, NY
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