Aly wrote:

Hello,

Ideas please?

A small professional UV box with two 8W tubes will cost about £100, and is,
professionally made and neat and tidy. I'm wondering if for sake of ease it
would be easier to just go out and buy one?

I've seen the UV "fly killer," tubes on eBay for say £10, which are
mentioned in a few of the tutorials online. Ballasts I have at home
somewhere. Would need a neat little case, cut glass, switches, bits bobs,
and time.

This is all purely for making the odd PCB so nothing commercial. There's
also those little UV nail boxes for curing the plastic, they're only about
£20 although I wonder about even coverage with those, and if indeed it is
the right type of UV?

Circular tubes? U-shaped tubes? Straight tubes? Little 9W dual parallel
tubes?

I'm just wondering in the end if it would be easier to just buy one,
although that's not really in keeping with the spirit of diy.

Many thanks for any input, I'm just looking for ideas and opinons really.
I'd also be half tempted to put in regular tubes too so that it can be used
as a light box.

Friendly regards,

Alison

ps. There's this one at Rapid for £110 in a little kit;

http://www.rapidonline.com/searchresults.aspx?style=0&kw=34-0690




Only seen the thread today and don't have the patience to read all the
contributions so apologies if this has been said elsewhe

I built a UV box using a desk drawer as the case - approx 1' x 1'. I
painted the inside gloss white, screwed the ballasts and spring clips to
the interior and fixed 3 UV B tubes into the spring clips. When
exposing a coated PCB I simply put the PCB on my desk, sandwiched the
artwork onto it with a sheet of perspex and then placed the lightbox on
top and left it cooking for the required time.

Total cost was whatever the price of the tubes was. It was very cheap
and only slightly nasty. I still have it (somewhere) but it never
failed to produce adequate results.

HTH

Richard

Richard