I'm in the process of building a resin UV curing box with not-so-cheap budget.
I have a Phrozen Mighty 8k on it's way to my doorstep, and the cheapest curing machines for that build volume start upwards of $250 - $700. For a box... With blacklights lights in it.... Yes, there is more to it than that, but not really much at all... So, I'm building my own, and my budget is what I WOULD have spent on the cheapest commercial unit.
I found a local supplier of UV transmissive quartz glass to use as the curing plate to hold work pieces above the UV source (cure the bottom without shuffling it around). Heh, that stuff is not cheap for a hunk of glass, but still well within budget compared to the cheapest big-enough commercial curing machine.
Now on to the UV source. Yes, I have seen a million videos on how to cure resin with a bucket and $15 spools of black light LEDs (UVA), and curing with sunlight, and.... There are a ton of non-commercial DIY solutions out there that use
UVA spectrum sources.
I came across the following article talking about UV photo initiation wavelengths of some polymers being in the UVC and UVB range:
https://polymerinnovationblog.com/uv-curing-part-2-tour-uv-spectrum/So apparently many (most?) photo activated polymers require UVC or UVB wavelengths, NOT UVA. So some type of special sauce gets added to 3D printer resin to allow it to cure using the lower energy UVA spectrum, but that doesn't mean that the same chemical goop would not cure with UVC or UVB. Obviously it comes down to the specific chemistry of the specific color of the specific type of the specific maker of the resin, but perhaps it's interesting enough to try curing with other wavelengths. Back at the beginning of the whole pandemic thing, for some crazy reason I was really interested in UVGI. A good book on the subject suggested by a fellow eevblog-er is by Wladyslaw Kowalski "Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation Handbook". UVGI uses UVC wavelength sources to kill all kinds of viruses, bacteria, and other nasty little buggers.
PSA WARNING: FYI for those not familiar, UVC is very nasty. It destroys DNA molecules and will cause cancer and various nastiness. Stay away from UVC unless you know what you are doing.
LOOONG story short, I have a small pile of UVC sources, both bulbs and LED lights, as well as UVC sensitive photodiodes to both verify the output of UVC sources as well as verify that shielding is not leaking, etc. And I used all of these previously, and used the sensors to verify the sources and the shielding I was using.
I
think that I might get some (
properly shielded) use out of my old UVC germicidal LEDs for curing my 3D resin prints.
To be clear, I'm not jumping into using UVC for this resin curing project to simply save $15 on blacklights. My thought is that UVC could possibly cure better, faster, and maybe have deeper penetration. Or not at all, thus I'm asking if there's someone knowledgeable might either encourage this course of action or comment on why it won't work (in more or less layman's terms).
Can anyone familiar with photo chemistry or photo activated polymers comment on the subject?
Thanks!