The UV Curing PROCESS WINDOW; Practical Relationships Between UV Lamps and Material Properties

The UV curing process, as with any production process, has limits of the range
in which it will work properly. Within these limits, the process will achieve
desired results. This range can be called the PROCESS WINDOW.

The parameters which define the window are entirely dependent on the process
involved. Cure, for example, is the object of the UV curing process, but it is
not a clearly defined result. Cure is meaningful only as it relates to properties of
the cured product. The properties of interest could be hardness, scratch
resistance, adhesion to a substrate, or simply surface tack. There seems to be a
limitless list of properties to achieve, varying greatly from one application to
another. In fact, each application has a unique set of properties which
characterize it.

The PROCESS WINDOW can be described as the range of a measurable
production variable within which cure meets an acceptance requirement. Very
often, the only measurable production variable is process speed, and the Process
Window is simply characterized by a maximum and minimum acceptable speed.