VSPOne Optical Technology Center-Sacramento opened in Folsom in November of 2014. The lab manufactures custom prescription eyewear and processes approximately 4,600 pairs of eyewear per day. Johnny Younger, a senior coating technician, has been with the company for 14 years.
Here, Coating Specialist John Vogt places a panel of lenses into an ultra-high vacuum chamber that will will apply an anti-reflective coating onto the lenses, eliminating glare and allowing wearers to see clearly.
Each vacuum chamber can coat between 140 and 180 lenses at a time. Vogt, who has been with VSP for 28 years, says detail-oriented precision is essential to the job. “This job is different than a lot of other jobs in that there’s not a lot of people doing it,” he says. “There’s only a couple of us in Sacramento who know how.”
Matt Potulny, a finishing specialist at VSPOne Optical Technology Center-Sacramento, has been with the company 29 years, making him one of the longest-standing employees at the lab. Potulny’s job is to create fashion tints on prescription lenses by dipping them into colored dyes to match samples sent by in by the doctor’s office.
He says the artistic element is both difficult as well as part of why he loves his job. “It’s a challenge, but you get a lot of satisfaction from matching a doctor’s job, specifically the really hard ones that take a long time to do,” Potulny says. “When the finished product looks exactly like the doctor’s job, it’s a really good feeling.”
Gerardo Aguilar, a senior finishing technician, has been with VSP for 26 years. Here, he works on mounting a acetate frame. The frames are delicate, and Aguilar says it requires a gentle touch to ensure you don’t do any damage.
Optical Realities
VSPOne Optical Technology Center