[Coral-List] Methods for nubbinising tabular corals?

[Shane Graber]

RE: UV curing of adhesives for coral frags:

UV Process Supply (http://www.uvprocess.com/) has a couple LED powered UV
curing setups
(http://www.uvps.com/products/Curiequ/uvled/uv_led_cureall.asp) for UV
curable adhesives if you're looking for a good low wattage UV source -- and
the price isn't too expensive either.  I've been watching the introduction
of these LED's units for a year or two now for possible application in our
manufacturing processes (not marine related!) and they are definitely
looking promising as LED prices come down.  I've toyed around with the idea
of custom formulating some sort of UV curable coral frag adhesive for
personal use, but I've never really taken the time to do so (by day I'm a UV
coating formulator).  The concept isn't all that tricky and it'd mostly be
based on methaycrylate chemistry (which is, IIRC, what most dental
formulations are based on) or acrylate chemistry (which is faster curing).
There's a number of UV formulating companies out there that may have
something that could be modified for your applications and IIRC Loctite also
has UV formulations for adhesives (at least the last time I checked).  The
nice thing about these kinds of adhesives is you put a blob of high
viscosity adhesive on the surface you want to mount the frag on, push the
frag into the adhesive, and then shine the UV LED's on the adhesive for a
couple seconds and it's completely cured.  It's very interesting technology
(I'm biased of course).   ;)

Another option would be having the formulation formulated with visible light
photoinitiators.  That way you wouldn't even need to mess around with UV
LED's and you could just use a high intensity visible light source to cure
the adhesive.  These would have a shorter working life as as soon as you
squirt the blob of adhesive onto the mounting surface the stuff would start
to cure.  These, however, would in general be higher priced due to the
higher initial cost of visible light photoinitiators compared to UV
photoinitiators.

HTH

Shane B. Graber
Sr. Research Chemist
E-Mail: sgraber at sauder.com
Phone: (419) 446-3774
Fax: (419) 446-4937

Sauder Woodworking
502 Middle Street
Archbold, OH 43502
http://www.sauder.com/


> toxicity.  Some 
> are available as point UV cured, which might be handy in a 
> lab setting.
> 
> 
> Best,
> 
> Eric Borneman
> 
> Department of Biology
> University of Houston
> Science and Research Bldg II
> 4800 Calhoun
> Houston TX, 77204
> 
> eborneman at uh.edu
>