Aluminum reflectors are provided to assist engineers to build a UV curing system without investing in extrusion dies, long lead times, and minimum draw charges. These can be used for low wattage applications in free air or forced air-cooling of UV lamps in an end cooled reflector assembly, or center cooled reflector assembly. These are commonly used for focusing uv light from a medium pressure mercury vapor lamp, uv curing lamp or metal halide lamp as metal halide reflectors.

Our extruded reflectors are made of specially processed 6061-grade aluminum. The inside surface is highly polished to yield an efficient transfer of UV energy from the uv bulb to the curing substrate. This high UV reflectance is approximately 90% and unlike other aluminum, this special grade resists tarnishing and corrosion. Enhanced reflectance liners, UV reflector liners or reflector sheets are not required; these products will typically only increase the uv reflectance, which is the amount of UV light from the ultraviolet lamp reaching the substrate by less than 5%.

Three styles are available, two elliptical and one parabolic diffuser.

Elliptical reflectors provide a line source. One focal point is at the center of the UV lamps the other focal point is positioned approximately 1.75" or 3.5" (depending on reflector used) from the bottom edge of the reflector to, the substrate. Parabolic aluminum reflector provide a collimated source and the reflectors bottom edge should be located 4 to 5 inches from the substrate. Spherical reflectors provide a non-uniform distribution of energy from UV lamps and are not offered by Hill Technical.  For proper lamp operation it is important that each half of our reflectors is separated by approximately one quarter of an inch to allow for convection cooling.

E-350

PO-50

5" Parabolic Diffuser

10' Sections

Note when ordering!

Each aluminum reflector comes in 10-foot or 12-foot sections. One section is only 1/2 of a reflector assembly, for example:

One 10-foot section is enough to build one 5-foot reflector assembly.

Below is an example of how our UV reflectors can be mounted as part of an irradiator or Reflector Assemblies in a finished UV Drying system. These systems use a magnetic ballast or metal halide ballast to operate the uv curing lamp. It is important to support the arc lamp positioned at the focal point of the extruded reflectors. End plates can be fabricated out of plate aluminum stock and screwed to the reflector. Because of the temperature range that lamps achieve, they will physically expand and then contract upon cooling. It is best to mount the ultravilolet lamp by constraining it as little as possible. A simple way to accomplish this with UV lamps is to make a "V" shaped cut into a rectangular piece of aluminum. This plate can then be mounted to the end plate. The lamp just rests in that "V" for support. A similar concept can be applied for ultraviolet blood irradiation, or other sterilization process such as water sterilizers or air sterilizer.