Re: UV fluorescent tubes

William Laven (William_Laven@designlink.com)
18 Jun 1995 19:16:17 GMT

Yes, there are 40W 24" bulbs. In fact there are higher wattage bulbs in 24"
also which, as you'd expect, require different ballasts. I've mentioned to
this group before the folks at Universal Light Source in San Francisco. They
deal primarily with people in graphic arts and know non-silver processes.
I've had Pt/Pd students go to them for years. Speak with Doug or Bryan:
415-647-9432. They could tell you about bulbs for 240V-land, too. I use the
Phillips 40TLK/03 bulb, a super actinic bulb which peaks in a narrow spectrum
at 420nm. This series bulb was mentioned in another post from Mike.

Speaking of Mike, he asked why black light bulbs. The blacklight bulbs I use
are uncoated (ie sans the dark blue coating) and they're cheaper than the
coated ones and yeah, a few more photons fly around. Blacklight is maybe
something of a generic term used to describe bulbs which peak around 360nm.

I'm interested in reading the stuff on metal sensitivity which Mike
mentioned. My and others trial and error (though not entirely methodical)
confirm that 420nm works well with Pt/Pd. My own printer is set up that way,
but those I use in workshops are 360nm bulbs (printers of different wattage
so a direct comparison is impossible).

Other info re:360nm vs 420nm would be appreciated.

Bill
platinum@org.org

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