Tuesday, April 30, 2019

TD Tom Davies Factory Tour - Part 4

Next was the Shocking bath. This isn’t what you think! There are no unscrupulous hygiene practices afoot at the TD Factory. This was a vat of oil, maintained at a specific temperature, to enable the setting of any adjustments made to buffalo horn frames. Originally when Tom was experimenting with horn frame production he had used an old ice-cream freezer for this. Want not, waste not!

Adjacent to the “shocking freezer” was an almost “steam-punk” looking pneumatic ram. This was the temple-shooting machine. This fired the strengthening core, which for all TD Tom Davies frames is high grade titanium, into the acetate temples. On the same desk was the silver solder apparatus and titanium pulse welder.


Behind this row of equipment, the underneath of the mezzanine is efficiently used. No part of the factory is free from Tom’s innovation and this area is no exception. Housed here, the tumbling and polishing drums. In mainstream spectacle frame production, the pieces of each frame are tumbled in large drums, often filled with bamboo pellets.

Due to the individual nature of the TD Tom Davies eyewear, this just wasn’t up to Tom’s exacting standards. He has both varied the sizing of these drums to enable individual and multiple frames to be tumbled efficiently, but also uses different types of wooden pellets to achieve different levels of desired finish. Tom doesn’t believe in “one size fits all!”


Adjacent to the tumbling is the “elves grotto!” Here the state-of-the-art laser engraving is conducted and stock ready to be shipped is housed. Tom was excited to say they have in excess of one million UK pounds (C$1.7million) of ready-to-wear frames ready for customers drastically reducing wait times and improving shipping efficiencies.


Part 3 ... /
Part 5 ... /

By Dr. John Wilson

Thursday, January 24, 2019

TD Tom Davies Factory Tour - Part 3

The polishing machine consisted of two industrial polishing wheels, controlled by way of a foot pedal allowing the operator safe use of both hands, and numerous different grades of polish blocks. Too harsh a polish at the wrong stage would spoil the final result. Alternatively, too fine a polish, too early in the process, would lengthen the time taken to achieve the end result, thus rendering the final completed frames more expensive to manufacture.

Perpendicular to the polishing station was the hand sand-blaster. This resembled a piece of lab equipment from the film “Outbreak.” A transparent fronted box with two entrance holes attached to thick, rubberized, internal, self-contained gloves used to hold the apparatus being treated (sand-blasted). Tom explained that doing this by hand required proper training, but well worth it, as the finish achieved was far superior to a mass-produced product.


Behind us was a couple of work benches where an experienced spectacle maker was hand-finishing the ready-to-wear frames ensuring all edges and joints where “square” and smooth when running your finger across it. “It’s what all Opticians expect when they’re selecting their frame stock. The better the joint, the better the finished spectacles.”

Around the corner to the next set of benches was the lug insertion machine. Tom had pioneered the use of a low melting-point metal alloy to cast a die to hold the frame front in the correct position in order to heat-sink the lug into the acetate front of the spectacles if not riveted. The alloy die could be produced in minutes, unlike the previous method of machining the die. This again allowed more cost-effective production of bespoke frames. Tom was proud to say that this method has been adopted by most of the spectacle industry.


Part 2 ... /
Part 4 ... /

By Dr. John Wilson