moved to: http://www.motoringunderground.com/f...ad.php?t=15022

 

moved to: http://www.motoringunderground.com/f...ad.php?t=15022

 

looking forward to your write up, I just found my next mod!!!

 

rkw - Is this anti-reflective the same as polarizing?
I've had issues wearing my polarizing sunglasses in the MINI because sometimes I can't see the LED readings like Speed or the Time. However if I tilt my head a bit they become visible again.
I guess what I am saying is that if this anti-glare is different from the polarizing coating, I'd be interested.

 

great find and great idea, I too know what i am doing next

 

Yes, anti-reflective and polarizing are different qualities. You can have one or the other separately or both together. An anti-reflective coating makes more light pass through the lens instead of bouncing off the surface. The effect is that it makes the lens more optically clear, i.e. closer to not being there. For good reason, just about any lens or filter for a camera has anti-reflective coatings on its surfaces -- you want as much light as possible from the subject to reach the film or sensors, not bounce off the lens surface.

 

Great - I'm interested then. Thanks for the optics lesson - now to dump these polarizing lens on my sun glasses.

 

Where would I find this anti-reflective stuff for a non-nav equipped 2003?

 

A properly aligned polarization will not block the visibility of LED or LCD displays. For the polarization to be correct it must be at the 180 degree plane. You can test it by holding 2 polarized lenses at a 90 degree difference. Because of the nature of polarization they will appear completely opaque when aligned at a 90 degree angle. Any optician will have a testing lens & can tell you what's going on.

So if your lenses are prescription, the polarization got twisted during edging or installation in the frames. If they are off the shelf sunglasses - you've been had by a cheap polarized lens.


RKW - Bad *** find on the Optimum acrylic!

 

wow that looks nice...my glasses i wear when taking off my contacts cut off the glare too!

 

Nice mod! But I just tinted my windows

 

Nice find. I am interested in this for MINInurse since she has a cabrio.

 

I'm an optometrist and with a strong glasses Rx myself and have has anti-reflection coating for years...the good AR coatings, until recently were fairly durable, but still scratched more easily than a scratch resistant plastic lens, but the latest coatings are much tougher and are as tough to scratch as scratch resistant plastic, but do smudge more and require more care. The one pictured, Crizal, is great, but that brand's newest one, Alize, adds a smudge resistant coating that works fantasticly...there are 2 other brands that work as well to avoid smudging and they each say their's is the best..(surprise).

That mod seems like a great idea...looking forward to the 'how to'.

Note: the AR coating used for this mod is a true AR as it has that bluish cast...this is different from glare-free glass you would see on a picture frame which minimzes reflections by etching the glass which would make it hazy to look through but not hazy if it is right over something. I try to clean the plastics of my speedo and tach as rarely as possible as they scratch and swirl amazingly easily and first will use packaging tape and lightly touch, not wipe, the plastic so it will lift off any dust/abrasive particles and then wipe with Z6 and a microfiber cloth that is meant for anti relection glasses

MiniMaybe...if you are looking at a wet road on a sunny day with your polarized sunglasses and your head is straight, and the glare on the road is reduced, then your polarized lenses work fine...then when you tilt your head 45 degrees the glare off the road comes back and you can see the same glare as everyone else, then when you have your head straight again, the glare gets reduced.....I'm sure they are fine.....when I wear my polarized glasses in my car, same thing happens to me....seems silly that they have the polarized bezel of the display at an angle that would cause this to happen

Yeah the AR coating totlally different form polarized lense...I have my regular clear glasses and my sunglasses both AR'd

 

When I first got my prescription sunglasses with the polarizing lens, I nearly became physically sick. Things were very bizarre looking like in an oddly 3-D kind of way.
Turns out they had one lens polarized at 90 deg and the other at 0 degs. Whoa, that was weird!. Still though the polarizing does make it hard to read the LEDs if my angle is just so. Also you can see weird patterns in some glass, like stress regimes or something.
So sorry for the off topic - back to the anti-glare thread.

 

Im liking this idea

 

hmmm if it's at all more scratch resistant then the oem lenses this would be a home run. I'm sick of the glare off my oem lenses and they are scratched to hell and need to be replaced any way.

 

Well, this explains why I have to clean my glasses 8 times a day.

 

[quote=MiniMaybee;1677748]When I first got my prescription sunglasses with the polarizing lens, I nearly became physically sick. Things were very bizarre looking like in an oddly 3-D kind of way.


Sorry to be off topic myself. I just got prescript polarized sunglasses a month ago. I wore them on a trip, and at one airport, the departure/arrival screens were ALL LCD! I could NOT see them! And of course taking the glasses off didn't help, cuz I'm so darn nearsighted.

Now back to our regular programming...

 

The AR coated acrylic sounds like a great idea.
It's gotta be way cheaper than getting an optician's lab to coat the
stock parts, which crossed my mind as well a couple months ago on
another related thread.
Look forward to hearing more details.

 

x2.

-Cody

 

Interesting
I haven't really noticed glare on GPMINIs dials, except if I'm trying to photograph them.
I'd love to have dials that didn't show marks so badly though!

 

My windows were tinted when I picked up Alice from the dealership back in aught 2 and the glare on the tach is often so bad I can't even see the LED display. Where can I get this AR lens for my car?

 

Looks like a DIY.
from his first gallery pic, sounds like it comes from a picture frame shop:
from the second pic:

Great info, Richard!
I've already polished by speedo/tach, but this looks even better.

 

An optician would not be able to coat the stock lenses with AR. The plastic and the coating (on good AR) are bonded at the molecular level. At least that's what I was told by the AR reps and labs back when I was an Optician. Plus the machines are application specific to optical lenses only.

This is a brilliant work around. As soon as I find someone in the Baltimore area that sells the Optium anti-reflective acrylic I'm gonna do it.

 

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