I've been experimenting with some UV LEDs for building an exposure unit. I'm using the negative dry film photoresist and discovered to my surprise that there is a limitation on minimum light intensity. If the intensity its too low then no amount of time will cause photo polymerisation of the resist. For example, one LED I tested at 15mA, 120mm distance did not cause any polymerisation in 40 minutes. The same LED at 30mm distance, 20mA, took only 30 second for polymerisation. I found if the light cannot expose the resist within about 2 or 3 minutes then the photoresist do not seem to react at all. At boarder line UV intensity, it partly polymerises leaving behind a soft matted looking resist after development. This imposes a design constraint on anyone who wants to make a LED exposure unit must because it there will be a minimum density of LEDs needed in the array. So far I've only experimented with single LED exposures. I'll make a 9 x 9 array for testing.
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UV LED + photoresist experiments
2008-02-27 by Adam Seychell
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