Tanning Lamps

Printing plates is the only thing I can think of. Litho plates where the plate is sandwiched up by vacuum to a negative film and exposed to bright UV light to burn the image into it. But I'm guessing if you needed that, you'd already know about it.

Erasing a whole lot of EPROMs?

Curing UV epoxy?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Exposing diazo film if anyone still uses that? Best of my bad ideas is exposing UV lithographic circuit boards before etching? From the once or twice I've peeked into a tanning bed the bulbs were about full length, so 4' long at least. Kind of big for any kind of hobbiest light box.

----- Regards, Carl Ijames

Before CAD, I used a UV tanning lamp to burn d-size assembly and fab drawings. I'd stack various layers of tapeup mylars on top of a piece of sepia diazo paper, with the light a few feet up. Play with layer exposure times and make nice fadeouts. It was a nuisance.

Warehouse-type mercury vapor lamps worked too. Break off the outer glass shell for more UV.

I still have a blueline machine and use it to make copies of my hand-drawn D-size schematics.

it is one of those tanning salon and they have a policy of replacing them r egularly. How else would they be up for free ?

hing out. But I do not want a tanning bed, have no plans to make them or an ything.

that ? Or some type of photographic process, etching mask or whatever ?

em and they are within reasonable driving distance. Anyone got any ideas ?

They're just using you to dispose of the lamps...dunno about the lamps but the salon people are trash.

"Do the lamps in tanning beds contain mercury? If so, how are they regulate d?

The lamps in tanning beds contain as much or more mercury than standard flu orescent lamps that are managed under the Universal Waste Rule (UWR) or ful l Subtitle C hazardous waste regulations. For state-specific regulations, g enerators (i.e., tanning salons) should contact their state or local enviro nmental regulatory agency to obtain current requirements for lamp disposal. Salon owners may also want to check with local or state health departments that often permit and regulate this industry."

Nope, too long a wavelength. As I remember, there's three main types of bulb. Tanning lamps that peak around 360 nm, poster lamps that peak around 300 nm, and the naked arc germicidal's that peak at

Even at 300 nm, an week on top of a poster lamp didn't erase a 2716. A germicidal did it in about 7 minutes.

The 300 nm ones work for that.

Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

I don't think the wavelength is short enough. UV erasers reek of ozone.

I use different UV fluorescent tubes to expose PC board dry film photoresist (filtered black light bulb, 405 nm) and a front panel label material (357 nm unfiltered bulbs).

I've never done the LPI solder mask, but apparently it uses similar techniques. (Actually, the dry film etch/plating resist would not make a bad solder mask, either. It is amazingly tough stuff.)

Jon

A really massive EPROM eraser?

I think 365 nm will erase an EPROM.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Hi

You could probably use them for etching mask. I've used a tanning lamp ("CLEO HPA 400") for presensitized boards (print design on overhead transparency with a laser printer, then place transparency with the printed side towards the PCB, with a piece of plexiglass on top for some weight). Once you have figured out how much exposure time is needed for the type of board and lamp used, it can work well enough.

But do shield your eyes properly, these lamps are dangerous to the eyes!

Dimitrij