an improved method for manufacturing contact lenses wherein monomer or comonomer mixture is placed into a mold caivty and subjected to polymerization conditions to form a polymerized shape of desired shape wherein the improvement comprises the inclusion of a release agent in the monomeric mixture wherein said release agent comprises less than about three weight percent of said monomeric mixture and is chosen from a mixture of hydrophilic polymers with lipophilic compounds application_number US 39714389 A description applicants have found that they can produce hard xerogel lenses which can be dry released from plastic molds by simply including in the monomer or comonomer mixture used to make the contact lens a mixture of a hydrophilic polymer and a lipophilic compound lenses made using this method are substantially equivalent to lenses made by state of the art methods with respect to their physical characteristics but they have the advantage of having simplified post casting processing into finished lenses due to the fact that they are still in their hard state the mixture of hydrophilic polymer and lipophilic compound is effective in accomplishing effective dry release in the range of 0 01 to less than 5 0 weight percent the preferable range is 0 01 to 1 0 weight percent it has been found that the ratio of hydrophilic polymer to lipophilic compound by weight can range from 5 1 to 1 5 most preferably the.