The use of UV-coatings in the car body repair industry has many advantages. The key benefits are speed, environmental friendliness, improved physical properties, less floor space needed and reduced scrap. These, together with environmental regulations inposed by govenments and greater sustainability awareness among customers explains the rapid growth of this segment within the coatings industry.
Until now UV-coatings have been cured through the use of mercury vapour lamps. These lamps have a number of serious drawbacks:
short lifetime (<500 hours)
frequent lamp replacement and high replacement costs
high energy consumption
warm up time
degradation of UV over lifetime
production of radiant heat
The environmental benefits of using UV-coatings are partly nullified by the use of environmentally hostile curing solutions.
At the request of the coating industry, LED Curing Systems developed the UV-LED ProCure, a LED curing system that has none of the drawbacks associated with mercury lamp based curing systems.
Led Curing Systems
