A new accelerator for electron beam curing

Electron beam curing (EBC) is increasingly replacing the UV curing technique or is additionally used to achieve a high-quality surface coating. The EBC shows clear advantages and is a fast, clean and environmentally friendly technique, since the coatings possess no volatile solvents. The development of a new generation of low-energy accelerators EBOGEN, which operate with acceleration voltages up to 150 kV, offers a space-saving and cost efficient equipment. The low-energy EBC technique can be applied in practice to the curing of coatings on rigid non-porous substrates with masses per unit area up to 80 g/m(2). This is not only adequate for top coatings on furniture and laminated panels but also for the thin coil coatings on flexible substrates such as in food packaging. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.