screen printing > DIY - From master engineered marvels to cobbled together jury-rigged or Jerry-built junk!
Most UV bang for your buck?
ABuffington:
The Histogram of a bulb says it all. If you don't know the histogram for any bulb you are accepting a salesman's pitch, if he doesn't have a histogram of the lamp he either doesn't know what works, or he is hiding the following. There is no cheap way to make a metal halide bulb. The Original Equipment will have a far better histogram showing the UV output spectrum and the amplitude in between. Cheap metal halides skimp on the expensive precious metals used in the lamp. These precious metals are what makes the UV spectrum. The cheaper the bulb, the less precious metals are used, or sometimes not as many are used to get the price down. Bulb life is generally shorter. Wattage is important, so is the histogram of the bulb you are buying. An 8k Olec with an L-1282 bulb has one of the best histograms going. This bulb will expose both diazo and pure photopolymers completely since they like different wavelength spikes to expose well. There is much more than meets the eye in exposure lamp construction than just ballasts and any old UV lamp, even if they are high wattage. I personally would use OEM bulbs for longer life with stronger histograms of UV output.
mimosatexas:
I agree with the concept of getting the best equipment when you are trying to optimize your processes.
I honestly don't care about that for this particular application. I don't do a ton of oversized stuff, but enough to make getting a more powerful lamp worth it if the cost is $500 or so. I know literally nothing about the 1k MH I use everyday, except that I got it from Homer and he said it worked and was extremely generous about it. That said, it works fine and I haven't seen a need to optimize that part of my process again...yet.
It looks like finding a fliptop platemaker is the way to go, and if it has broken components that aren't related to the lightsource itself, all the better deal-wise. I still find it hard to believe you can't source just a ballast/powersupply by itself from some random cheapo manufacturer.
IntegrityShirts:
Along the same lines of most bang for the buck UV. Has anyone seriously thought about a DIY LED exposure unit? You can get LEDs in the 365-395nm range pretty darn cheaply in lower wattages. Higher power ones are more expensive but still not too bad. Won't really help you mimosa for large format exposure, but could be a cool test/retrofit for people with tube units.
tonypep:
BTW I believe the term is Jerry-Rigged although so many use Jury Rigged by now they are synonomous.
Filed under who cares.
Frog:
--- Quote from: tonypep on April 09, 2014, 10:21:47 AM ---BTW I believe the term is Jerry-Rigged although so many use Jury Rigged by now they are synonomous.
Filed under who cares.
--- End quote ---
You sir, are obviously not a 250 year old sailor!
Most word freaks have found that "jerry-rigged", though popular, is actually the bastard child of "jury-rigged" (dating back to sailors making makeshift repairs in the late 1700's) and "jerry-built", commonly understood to mean to be made cheaply or shoddy, and only traced to 1868. Interestingly, "jerry-rigged" according to some, can only be traced back to 1959.
For our purposes here, we welcome both meanings, and the board name has been modified to reflect this.
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