UV LED Curing and It’s Importance

Posted by Digital Seo on July 9th, 2019

Commercial use of UV LED curing technology is rapidly progressing owing to improved energy production and increased accessibility of ink, adhesive and chemistry coating formulations. The UV LEDs intensity production is increasing at an annual pace of 12 percent!

UV LED Output

In contrast to traditional UV curing systems with a wide spectrum output, UV curing LED output is presently accessible in small monochromatic wavelengths of 365, 385, 395 and 405 nm.

While this means less waste output (unneeded or unusable wavelengths), it also means chemistry formulators that are needed to develop new chemistries that respond to these specific wavelengths while still delivering the specific requirements for ink, coating or adhesive. Some applications such as encapsulating / potting electronics, composites of fibreglass, UV powder coating, spot cure and laminating adhesives already use longer wavelength additives, or arc lamps "doped." These applications are therefore a natural fit to use UV LED curing.

Commercial UV LED curing

UV LED curing is currently being used commercially for graphic arts printing applications such as digital inkjet printing, flexographic and offset sheet fed printing , industrial inkjet marking / coding, adhesive bonding / assembly, binding, screen print decoration, optical fibre coatings, wood decoration, coating, photographic applications and many others across induced printing.

For certain applications, retrofitting production lines with current UV curing technologies to UV LED curing systems (in addition to or as a substitute) is inevitable due to important process changes and the resulting company advantages available.

Advantages of UV LED curing includes higher rates of manufacturing, increased flexibility and control of processes and use in Conveyors, indexing machines, or robots. Also they are easy to retrofit. Reliability of processes, worldwide consistency and reduced working costs are also some of the benefits.

Challenges

In the same manner that LED technology has substituted the automotive lighting, interior lighting and other traditional light sources, UV LED curing will inevitably replace traditional UV curing technology owing to its benefits for some ink, coating and adhesive apps. Naturally difficulties stay in some manufacturing procedures for UV LED curing, including discovering appropriate and accessible formulations of chemistry. The Industrial LED Curing Equipments employ a very sophisticated technology and has great applications.

Applications requiring a hard coat are particularly challenging for curing UV LEDs since short wavelengths well below 365 nm are required for surface healing.  An ideal solution can be to combine UV LED Curing Equipment with current UV curing.

For more information please visit: Industrial LED Curing Equipments