UV Curing Systems for Heat Sensitive Applications

04 Feb 2010

UV Curing Systems for Heat Sensitive Applications

UV curing systems are used for many applications. The most common systems are those that use Mercury (Hg) lamps. These lamps are suitable for most applications but they can cause problems when they have to be run at high power. A significant portion of this high power is given off as heat and, as the lamps are running continuously, the irradiated material can be raised in temperature by a significant amount especially if the curing process requires a long curing time. For many applications this is not an issue, however for some materials this can lead to melting, leaching of sap, heat damage, warping and thermal stress from dissimilar materials amongst other issues.

One of the solutions to overcome these issues is to use Pulsed UV Systems such as those from Xenon Corporation. These systems have a number of attributes that make them very suitable for UV curing of heat sensitive materials as well as other applications such as sanitization/sterilization, solar simulation systems and general broadband UV generation for R&D purposes.

Xenon Pulsed UV Systems have the following characteristics:

Energy per pulse	13 to 505 Joules/pulse
Peak Power	0.38 to 1.58 Mega-Watt (MW)
Pulse Duration	34 to 320 micro-second
Pulse Repetition Rate	3 to 100 pulses per second (PPS)

These characteristics allow a lot of UV light to be delivered in a very short time ensuring efficient UV curing with minimum temperature rise. Many curing processes will only need one or two pulses allowing the parts to be indexed to the lamp before the pulses are fired. This can give high throughput for some applications. The high pulse energy ensures curing of thick layers or when the UV light has to pass through other materials such as polycarbonate. Other processes require high rep-rate for continuous feed applications whilst still maintaining low temperature rises.

Most UV curable materials, adhesives or coatings are formulated for the Hg lamps spectral output which can be described as being made up off a series of discrete spectral lines. The Pulsed Xenon lamp systems produce a continuous broadband output with less discrete structure all the way down to 200nm. This opens the door to new formulations which would not be very effective with Hg lamps. Existing formulations for Hg lamps can be tested for suitability with the Pulsed Xenon lamps.

Another key advantage of the Pulsed Xenon lamps is that they can be made in various shapes and sizes such as linear (up to 30”), U shaped or spiral shaped. The spiral lamps are used to cure Blu-ray and DVD discs. These produce very hard coatings as required for Blu-ray discs.

Xenon Corporation’s Pulsed UV Systems are available exclusively in the UK and Ireland through Lambda Photometrics Ltd. Choose your solution from a number of power supplies, lamps and lamp housings.

For more information including specifications contact:

Ken Middleton, Sales Manager
T: 01582 764334
E: xenon@lambdaphoto.co.uk
W: www.lambdaphoto.co.uk

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UV Curing Systems for Heat Sensitive Applications

04 Feb 2010

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