EYEGLASS LENS COATING REMOVAL FAIL!!! Glass Etching Cream on polycarbonate glasses lenses

DO NOT attempt to remove flaking eyeglass lens coatings using glass etching cream, on polycarbonate (plastic) lenses, as per multiple sources of advice online. In my experience, IT DOES NOT WORK AND RUINS THE LENSES!

[@Aaron-wordbilly]

thanks for the warning. I had semi-effective results using Meguiar's Ultra-Cut Compound and Meguiar's Soft Buff Pad DFC5 attached to a variable speed drill. I spent hours polishing my lenses and like i said, the results were only some what effective but the lenses are much better than what they were prior to polishing them. Only try if you got nothing to lose and its an emergency.

[@rx6180]

I recently changed my optician. Although the change of optician has nothing at all to do with my attempt to remove the coating off my old lenses with etching cream, I’ve gone there for new glasses and mentioned what I’d done and what had happened, and I was told that the coatings do not come off (apart from the edges flaking!) Your use of abrasives I can imagine working, but I suppose there might be a tiny risk of altering the prescription slightly depending how much material is removed.

[@charis_b]

Glad I watched this video before I did this exact thing! Have you discovered anything that actually works to remove the lens coating? Thanks!

[@rx6180]

No, I’ve not attempted anything like this again. Apart from anything else I’ve no more ‘bad’ eyeglasses to try it on. The video I watched that used the exact product I bought, which is what persuaded me to give it a go, did, I thought, still show some marks on the lenses after treatment, but the narrator claimed it was just scratching that was present before the coating removal. I wasn’t fully convinced but had a very old pair of glasses to experiment on first. Every online source I found said ‘glass etching cream’ to remove flaky lens coatings from plastic lenses. The result with my very old glasses was not very satisfactory. Some coating seemed removed but not all of it, and I had numerous attempts. But my lenses appeared more scratched after the treatment and I believed it was because I’d followed the other KZbin video by agitating the cream on the lens with a cotton bud. I began to believe the cream had abrasive particles. You cannot touch it though! So after a while, when the flaking coating has become a bigger issue with my better glasses, the ones in this video, I took the risk of trying again but this time I wasn’t going to rub the cream around. I dabbed it lightly with a smalll modeller’s paint brush. And the lenses just went milky. Different coating materials maybe. There is no way to know. I mentioned it at my optician and they said “No the coatings don’t come off.” So, bad advice online.