I bought one of those on ebay once.
I made a couple of modifications to mine though. the one i got had 4 bulbs, the two in the middle were level and the ones on the end were lower and placed at an angle. I cut the side sockets out and then cut some new holes for them so that all 4 would be level and superglued them back into place.
The other modification i made was i added a pot. The nail dryer i had came with a 3 position switch (Timed, Off, and On). The timed part was just controlled by a 555 and there were unpopulated spots on the pcb that made it easy to add a pot to change the timing. I found that my boards actually exposed in under one minute when placed inside the dryer (where your hand is supposed to go) when using dry film.
--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "designer_craig" wrote:
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> --- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "dave_donlan" wrote:
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> > Just been looking on flea bay and came across these
> >
> > 36W Nail UV Lamp Acrylic Gel Curing Light
> >
> > has anyone had any experience with these unit for producing pcbs - seem quite cheap might be worth a llok
> > Dave
> >
> I ordered on a while back to make an expousure box. The one I go has 4 U shaped 8W tubes (36W total). As is, it would do a 4x4 board. I figured I wanted a little larger unit so the plan was to go with more tubes in a DIY box. Also wanted the ability to do both sides of the board at once.
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> The replacement 8W bulbs are quite inexpensive, so I will just buy more bulbs. No need for bulb sockets, just RTV the bulbs in place and solder directly to the pins. The real issue is where to get low cost ballasts. The nail unit I got had one ckt board that powered 4 bulbs, best I could tell there was one main line chopper and 4 bulb current limiting inductors. If you don't want to roll your own ballast just hack some from old CFL cork screw bulbs -- they work fine. FYI inside the blastic base of the bulb each end of the tube has two filiment wires. One wire from each filiment is connected to the pin on the base of the bulb. The ohter filiment pins are joined together with a series capacitor. Thus the bulbs will appear open to dc and an ohm meter.
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> Craig
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