Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

Since I know very very little about optics, I can not tell you a sceintific answer. However, the problem lies in how the light incide on to the superficial area of the laminate. If you place a LED matrix you can not guarantee that a uniform light will incide the board. Think of that light as cones emerging from each led. There is some equipment that can "see" how the light pattern is emerging. I do not remember which equipment is (maybe for scientific purposes) but you would see that there are "interferences" in the light. Something like water waves adjacent to others. And forgetting about that expensive scientific equipment and returning to PCB shop equipment, if you use a radiometer measuring different points you would encounter that the UV emission is different. If you try to collimate that LED matrix you could waste a lot of time, effort, and too much money just to obtain (if you can do it) almost the same performance that a flourescent or mercury lamp setup. Maybe someone with real optics knowledge could bring some real information, and not just the empirical question that is enough for me.