Patent ID: 7235195

Claim:
A method for producing a contact lens by means of stereolithography, comprising the steps of: (a) obtaining a bath of a lens-forming material, wherein the bath is obtained by depositing (i) an essentially solvent-free liquid or melt of a lens-forming material, or (ii) a solution of said lens-forming material, into a container, wherein said lens-forming material is crosslinkable or polymerizable by actinic radiation; (b) scanning a first energy beam and a second energy beam over the top of the bath of the lens-forming material following a pattern under control of a computer to obtain a cured layer of polymerized or crosslinked lens-forming material, wherein the first energy beam strikes perpendicularly the surface of the bath of the lens-forming material, and wherein the second energy beam strikes the surface of the bath at an angle which is substantially tangent to the surface of the contact lens to be formed so as to form the peripheral edges of the cured layer so that the resultant contact lens has a relatively smooth surface; and (c) repeating step (b) to obtain additional cured layers, one layer on top of another previously cured layer, until said contact lens is created integrally, wherein each of cured layers corresponds to a pertinent slice of said contact lens.