LUMOFIL

TM

Fully Customizable Cosmetic Applicator

Year

Ongoing since 2022

My Role

Director of Product | Product Development Lead@OPT Industries

FMEA, DFM, Project Coordination, Computational Design, Design Direction, Process Development, Design Transfer, Patent Writer

Lumofil is OPT's mascara-applicator platform: a family of brushes built by roll-to-roll photolithography rather than injection molding. Because each bristle is grown additively, geometry that a mold tool cannot release — undercut tips, mixed bristle lengths, asymmetric curls, graded densities — becomes a design variable. Every applicator can be re-tuned to a specific lash effect: volumizing, lengthening, defining, segmenting.

The work spans concept generation, brush-geometry design, prototyping iteration, and the homologation programs that brand QA teams require before a new applicator reaches production — mechanical fatigue, fiber pull, wiper compatibility, and chemical interaction with each formula. Lumofil is now a productized platform that shortens the path from a brand's creative brief to a manufacturable SKU, with several programs in market and others advancing through validation.

Because every fiber is grown from a geometry file rather than released from a mold, the mascara brush is fully parametric end to end. Length, diameter, taper, density, curl direction, stiffness, and tip profile are all addressable variables — and they can vary within a single brush, not just between SKUs. A volumizing core can carry lengthening tips; one flank can comb while the other deposits; a curl can be built into the bristle itself rather than coaxed out of a wiper. Each parameter becomes a design lever, and the brush becomes a digital asset — versioned, tuned, and re-issued the way a brand would iterate a formula. What used to be a tooling decision, frozen at the moment a mold was cut, is now a file that can be customized per SKU, per formula, per lash effect, and re-spun the moment the brief changes.

Fully Customizable
Digital-to-Physical Workflow

The same printed-fiber capability behind a Lumofil mascara brush can be re-tuned into something that isn't a brush at all. Shorten the fibers, pack them densely, and soften the tips, and the bristle field collapses into a continuous velvety surface — a flock — without adhesives or electrostatic deposition. That single geometric shift opened the Flockless family: lip, eyeliner, concealer, and spot-corrector applicators printed on the same production line as mascara, separated only by the geometry file.

Digital Flocking

Production scale is engineered into the geometry itself. Brushes are arrayed across the build plate in tight, repeating ranks — oriented and pitched to maximize fill on OPT's roll-to-roll photolithography line, so every square centimeter of the print web carries usable parts rather than empty travel.

Getting there took many iterations: array layout, support strategy, print parameter and post-process handling were each tuned against the others, and refined through a structured DOE that drove yield up while pushing throughput per roll. The result is a process that prints a fully parametric mascara brush at the cost structure of a mass-manufactured one — bespoke geometry, industrial volume.