Oakley Making Real Carbon Fiber Sunglasses? by Dave P.

We’ve already read about Tag Heuer developing reading glasses made out of carbon fiber, but what about one of the largest sunglass makers we know of…Oakley.  Over at Oakley’s official blog, Newbear Lesniewski blogged about working with Paul Crosby (Owner of Crosby Composites) to mess with some carbon fiber material.

The post, entitled “Why Are We Messing Around With Carbon Fiber?“, gives us a little insight as to what’s going on behind the scenes at Oakley, as well as a potential high-end carbon fiber product that may be developed.

While these wouldn’t be the first carbon fiber glasses we’ve seen (Tag Heuer C-Flex), we’d definitely be interested in looking at a final design.  Oakley seems to be working with Crosby Composites on this project, a company that specializes in low volume carbon fiber parts for the likes of Formula 1, WRC, and touring cars.

Oakley goes a little bit into the cutting process, talking about how Crosby’s 5-axis CNC machine has the capability to cut in 0.5mm diameter increments.  They had this interesting quote:

Now, there are a lot of companies that could make great carbon fiber parts. Trouble is, most of them don’t have the cost-intensive machining equipment to actually do it.

That’s a lot of hype to me, lets see if they can live up to it!  Oakley, if you’re listening, make sure to keep us at Carbon Fiber Gear in the loop!