After working with UV Technology and UV Applications Engineering for over 20 years there seems to be a never ending stream of new opportunities of which UV technology can be applied on a daily basis. The basic advantages are simple.
A quality UV application most always exhibits:
- Superior product life and durability.
- Increased product appearance or aesthetics over a longer period of time.
- Production or curing at a fraction of the time needed for conventional materials such as solvent based or epoxy type materials.
- 100 percent solids or in other words no VOC’s (Green Friendly).
- Requires less material to do more and sometimes the material that is unused can be recovered for future use.
The activator in conventional materials is usually time or heat and sometimes both which are needed to achieve a cured or dried state. With UV activated materials they use a component called Photo-initiator which when matched with the correct spectral output or nM (nanometer) or wavelength causes the material it is mixed with to go from a liquid to a solid basically.
Below is a UV Adhesive Demonstration video that simply points out the most simple core principles of UV curing. Speed, Durability and ease of use when the process has been correctly engineered. In this case a UV adhesive is used to cement a threaded insert to a joining piece of polycarbonate as a pre-assembly of components.