Patent ID: 8589134

Claim:
A method of monitoring lens material resident within a conduit to improve the quality of molded lenses by reducing defects arising from entrapped lens material, comprising the steps of: storing a finite element mesh representative of a conduit in a digital storage device; running a simulation with a co-injection software template that simultaneously injects partial shots of two different resins having a positive flow rate during a single molding cycle on a digital computer by configuring the template to simulate (i) one type of lens material sequentially flowing through the conduit in discrete batches (ii) a first batch having a zero flow rate sitting in the conduit until the second batch flows therethrough and (iii) a portion of the first batch remaining entrapped within the conduit; and tracking the temporal history of the batches within the conduit and displaying the different batches on a visual display so that product degradation resulting from extended residence time of entrapped resin can be identified, wherein the display device and the storage device are operatively coupled to the digital computer.