A way of monitoring and controlling monomer conversion during UV curing has been named as one of the projects in the RadLaunch Start-up Technology Accelerator Class of 2020.
RadLaunch was set up by industry association RadTech as an idea accelerator platform for ultraviolet (UV) and electron beam (EB) technology start-ups, students and innovators.
Five developers/projects have been selected as inductees into the RadLaunch Start-up Technology Accelerator Class of 2020, including Eindhoven University of Technology’s High Tech Systems Center and TNO for its idea on real-time feedback controlled monomer conversion.
To ready UV curing technology in line with the fourth industrial revolution, PhD researcher Thomas Hafkamp from Eindhoven University of Technology has proposed acquiring in-situ measurement data of monomer conversion from a spectrometer and feeding this data into a real-time feedback controller. The feedback controller computes a corrective action for the UV light source if the monomer conversion momentarily deviates from the intended value. This is said to make the UV curing process ‘more robust to disturbances’ and could prove to be an ‘indispensable solution’ for quality control.
Other inclusions in the RadLaunch Start-up Technology Accelerator Class of 2020 include: a new renewable monomer for the radiation curing Industry, developed by Pyran; a new photoinitiating system with unprecedented photo-efficiency and extensive post-conversion in the dark, developed at the University of Colorado; the high-area rapid printing (HARP) 3D printing technology by a team at Northwestern University, enabling record-breaking throughput in the field of stereolithographic printing, regardless of size; and next-generation energy storage using UV curing of novel polymer electrolyte materials, developed by the Hosein Research Group at Syracuse University.
The RadLaunch Start-up Technology Accelerator Class of 2020 will be inducted at the next RadTech biennial conference, taking place 8-11 March in Orlando, Florida.
Read more about the latest developments in curing technology in the January/February issue of Digital Labels & Packaging, including input from RadTech; register here to receive all six issues of the magazine in 2020, and beyond, for free
