- 01 March 2006 -
UV-cured Coatings Take Hold in Surface Finishing
By Greg Valero, g.valero@elsevier.com

I recently attended the winter meeting of RadTech, the association that promotes ultraviolet (UV) and electron beam (EB) technology in North America. RadTech officials are busy planning the e5 UV & EB Expo & Conference, which runs April 24 to 26 at Lakeside Center, McCormick Place, in Chicago. e5 is an acronym for the primary advantages radiation curing technology offers end users: efficient, enabling, economical, energy saving, and enviro-friendly.

I attended this meeting to learn more about the potential for UV/EB in the metal finishing industry. What I found was rad curing is a small application, used on about 10% of metal parts produced in the U.S. Nonetheless, the use of the technology is growing by double-digits, according to suppliers, and interest is intensifying in light of runaway energy prices and end-user demands for faster production cycles.

The speed of process and production efficiency gains of UV/EB technology makes it a cost-effective alternative to conventional coatings operations. Two of the most publicized forms of rad curing are UV and EB, or visible light, used to polymerize a combination of monomers and oligomers onto a substrate. The end result is coatings that provide improved functionality to the finished metal product that may not be possible with other types of finishes.

While UV-curing technology has been around since the 1960s and remains prevalent in many industrial markets, the use of rad-cured coatings for metal finishing applications has just begun to take hold. With applications on multiple types of metal—including steel, coil, bronze, aluminum, and more—the use of the technology has a bright future in finished metal. Automotive is one of the fastest growing applications, RadTech reports, as carmakers and Tier 1 component suppliers are showing increasing interest in the technology to achieve scratch/mar-resistant coatings with faster processing, lower energy and floor space costs.

While no one is quite certain how much of that potential will come to fruition, even if a small percentage of it does, this will represent fairly large growth.
"The biggest challenge of the industry is simply to get the word out and educate regulators and manufacturers about the environmental, as well as competitive-enhancing benefits, of UV and EB technology," says Gary Cohen, RadTech's executive director.

Metal Finishing magazine is sponsoring the "UV Curing for Metal Finishing" session that will held at e5 on Tues., April 25, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
At press time, the session included the following confirmed presentations: "Overview of UV Coatings" (Thomas Slavinsky, Prime Coatings); "Surface Preparation" (Todd Mong, Allied PhotoChemical); "Application Methods" (John Owed, ITW Ransburg); "3-D Coating & Curing of Metal Parts" (David Hagood, Nordson); "Overview of UV-Curing Equipment" (Dennis Kaminski, IST America); "UV-cured Coil Coating Primers: 11 Years Corrosion Resistance" (Chris Lowe, Becker Industrial Coatings); "The Benefits of a Systems Integrator" (Frank Popiel, The Control Systems Group); and "EB-cured Coil Coating Topcoats: 12 Years Weathering Experience" (Chris Lowe, Becker Industrial Coatings).

You can find updates on this session as well as more details about the show by visiting www.e52006.com.