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Raul Santillan

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Is possible replace solar light (UV) by a artificial source?

As you know, solar UV light is a natural bleach for cloths, bleaching effect depends on day conditions but even rainy sun´s UV rays are always present.
So in order to replace sun with an artificial source I wonder if some one can help me on develop this artifical source for bleaching cloths.

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  • Ed Schulte 50+

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    Nov 15 2012: Just type in "full specrum lighting" or "daylight balanced lighting" in your search window and you will find extensive supplier

  • John Smith 30+

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    Nov 15 2012: Yup, the "black lights" you sometimes see in clubs are UV lamps.

    • Raul Santillan

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      Nov 15 2012: great, do you know what characteristics I must to use for getting good results?; I mean

      Power = ?
      wavelenght = ?
      others = ?
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        Kitty Hawk

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        Nov 15 2012: Anything that emits light with a wavelength less than 400nm is what you're looking for. Examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_light#Types_of_black_lights

        As for power, the sun puts out ~32W/m^2 of UV light, so that gives you a baseline for what to look for. Make sure to protect the area you are doing this in: UV lights not only put out a lot of heat, but can also damage your eyes with that much power!

        • Raul Santillan

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          Nov 15 2012: thank you very much, In fact I´m using a UV lamp of around 1 watt in order to avoid damage on my eyes, but I can´t get bleaching (main purpose) cloths, do you know if distance between lamp and garment is important?; or maybe exposure time?
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        Kitty Hawk

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        Nov 16 2012: I don't think a 1W lamp will do much: it might use a watt of power, but will only make about 1/4 watt of UV light and most of that won't touch your target. You will either need to get a much bigger lamp or concentrate sunlight somehow. As a rough estimate; if you had a lamp in a box lined with aluminum foil (maybe 75% of the light hits the target) then a 40W UV bulb would be about the same as direct sunlight for a pair of jeans, but then you have a fire hazard since you have around 30W of heat going into the box.

        Since you want to do it faster than sunlight, you'll need to make and seal the box with a UV-absorbing material (like acrylic) for safety. Then you just need to design a cooling system to prevent fires and you can put a bunch of UV bulbs in there! If you would rather use sunlight, you could suspend the clothes with wire and make a parabolic reflector underneath out of aluminum foil and scrap, but it's hard to estimate how effective those are when hand-made.
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    Krisztián Pintér 200+

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    TED Translator
    Nov 15 2012: sure. a simple incandescent lamp can do it with fused quartz glass instead of normal glass.

    • Raul Santillan

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      Nov 15 2012: do you mean UV lamps are simply incandescent lamps with quartz glass?, by the way do you know what characteristic lamp must to have in order to geeting good (bleaching cloths) results?; I mean

      power = ?
      wavelenght = ?
      other = ?
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    Lejan . 30+

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    TED Translator
    Nov 15 2012: What about chemical methods?

    And please, don't tinker with our sun, we need her... ;o)

    • Raul Santillan

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      Nov 15 2012: by now we are trying with light, I mean UV rays, do you know how?
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        Lejan . 30+

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        TED Translator
        Nov 15 2012: Well, it depends on the UV intensity you need for your purpose. Regular fluorescent bulbs emitt UV light within certain bands. Also 'black lights', Ultraviolet LEDs or Ultraviolet lasers could be used.

        Those light sources are all available today and to find what you need you may look into UV testing equipment, which is used to evaluate the UV stability of different materials:

        http://www.drb-mattech.co.uk/UV%20test%20machines.html

        Your above mentioned questions on: power = ? / wavelenght = ? / other = ?
        depends on the UV stability of the material you work on, which includes its specific weakness at certain frequency-bands. Power may also be exchangeable by exposure time, what you have to figure out yourself what works best on your samples.

  • george lockwood 20+

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    Nov 15 2012: ? One can get bleached blue jeans otherf ways. ?

    • Raul Santillan

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      Nov 15 2012: sure sun UV rays can bleach any cloths.
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