Carbon Craft Eyewear by Nguyen Vu Duc is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 A' Design Award in Eyewear Design Competition Category.
IronEyewear· 2025
Carbon Craft Eyewear
Client: VOOC Design
A' Design Award Winner in Eyewear Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #169331The Design
About Carbon Craft Eyewear
Carbon Craft is an exceptionally durable and reliable product. The eyewear frame is produced using 3D FDM printing combined with manual surface polishing. This design embraces a classic style by completely eliminating hinges and metal framing. No screws are used. The components can be easily assembled and replaced. It applies a unique shaping technique from carbon technology, enhancing the material's structural integrity and load-bearing capacity.
The Recognition
About the A' Design Award
Carbon Craft Eyewear is an Iron A' Design Award winner, a prestigious recognition granted to good designs that meet the professional and industrial requirements expected from well-designed creations. Iron winners demonstrate great skill, high specialization, expert understanding, and creative capacity of their creators. Carbon Craft Eyewear is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished creation that is practical and innovative. This Iron A' Design Award-winning design integrates industry best practices and has competent technical characteristics linked with know-how and talent. Carbon Craft Eyewear is respected for its thoroughness and is designed to provide quality of life improvements that help make the world a better place.
Where to Get It
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Learn MoreInterviews
Grand Interview
Your innovative approach to eliminating hinges and metal framing in Carbon Craft Eyewear challenges traditional eyewear construction - what inspired this revolutionary design decision and how does it enhance the user experience?
In our previous eyewear projects, we had the opportunity to work with a variety of materials such as bamboo, wood, buffalo horn, natural fibers, and carbon fiber. Each type of material has its own unique crafting process and specific type of hinge. These fundamental elements have, to some extent, influenced the purity of our creative expression.Additionally, in recent times, while spending time playing with my young daughter, the shortcomings of traditional methods for crafting eyeglass frames have begun to reveal themselves—particularly the metal structural frame and the easily deformed hinges.
The unique combination of 3D FDM printing and manual surface polishing in Carbon Craft Eyewear represents a fascinating blend of modern technology and traditional craftsmanship - could you elaborate on how this hybrid approach evolved during your development process?
A new starting point emerged from 3D printing technology in general, and from the limitations of FDM technology in particular. We had to find a way to establish the optimal physical state of the object during the 3D printing process to enhance structural strength. The unique design of the frame also contributes to increased flexibility.3D printing technology helps minimize production steps, raw materials, time, and cost. Choosing to hand-polish and finish the surface was a brilliant decision, enhancing the smoothness and tactile quality of the materia
As a parent who designs for active lifestyles, how did your experience with your two-year-old daughter influence the durability and functionality features incorporated into Carbon Craft Eyewear?
As someone who frequently wears glasses and takes on many roles in a day—from designer to sports enthusiast to parent—previous frames often couldn’t withstand unexpected impacts and rarely survived unscathed. The key point of Carbon Craft’s design is that we embrace the bending of traditional hinges and seek a new approach that is cost-effective and easy to replace.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- VOOC Carbon Craft is designed with a classic aesthetic, No screws are used, completely eliminating hinges and metal framing.
The components can be easily assembled and replaced.
By applying characteristic shaping techniques of carbon technology, it increases the formability and strength of the material.
The shape structure has high stability. - Dimensions & Packaging
- 1. The frame: width 143 mm x depth 155 mm x height 49 mm weight: 29 g, material: Nylon Carbon
2. The hinge: width 10 mm x depth 19 mm x height 2 mm, material: TPU
3. The box: width 154 mm x depth 58 mm x height 60 mm, material: PETG Carbon - Tags
- Simplicity, reliability, durability, lightweight
- Production Technology
- 1. Modeling in Rhinoceros 3D software.
2. The components are printed using FDM 3D printing technology. Carbon fibers are mixed with Nylon resin in various ratios to create the perfect material to replace metal frames, reducing weight. Properly programming the 3D printer enhances the material's strength and improves the surface quality of the print. The hinge part is printed from TPU material. The structure is created from multiple layers of stacked plastic fibers.
3. Surface smoothing is done by manual grinding and polishing techniques. - Design Challenge
- Eliminating some types of machinery, reducing the variety of input materials, reducing CO2 emissions, reducing water pollution, and reducing costs for factory space. It can support customers remotely. The durability is beyond imagination; you can rest assured to fall asleep while reading, spend more time with your two-year-old daughter. Don't worry when accidentally bumping into a car door. When the force is too strong, the TPU hinge can absorb the impact.
- Research
- For conventional classic eyeglass frames: the Temples are shaped by an inner metal rod and connected to the Frame Front through metal hinges and screws. This structure is easily deformed when subjected to strong forces. Customers find it difficult to replace parts by themselves for repairs.
Following the global development of technology, 3D printing technology has become more popular at a lower cost. Carbon fibers are mixed with Nylon resin in various ratios to create the perfect material to replace metal frames, reducing weight and optimizing costs. - Inspiration
- Starting from my habit of wearing glasses all the time: working, cycling, playing with my two-year-old daughter... I want to create a design that boasts superior durability, optimizes production costs, allows for easy replacement of parts, and maintains a fashionable look suitable for external activities.
- Project Duration
- The project started in Ho Chi Minh city after a visit to Sabae, Japan in the summer of 2024.
- Operation Flow
- The replacement joints are pre-installed in the cap. The replacement process is very simple: slide the temples perpendicularly out of the fixed mount on the frame front. Remove the TPU joint from the fixed mount on the temples. Replace with a new TPU joint in the fixed mount on the frame front. Finally, hook the entire mount on the temples and the TPU joint, adjust the TPU joint to slide into the pre-existing groove on the temple to complete the process.
- Team Members
- VOOC Design Team
- Image Credits
- VOOC Design
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