Flexible UV Light Curing System for Protective Coatings

To address the U.S. Air Force need for uniformly curing paint coatings for 3D curved surfaces (convex or concave) with areas up to 12 in. x 12 in., Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop the Flexible UV/Visible Light Curing (FUVLC) system, initially developed and demonstrated for the OSD/Navy to cure corrosion-resistant coatings for touch-up repairs over a wide variety of surface configurations and in hard-to-reach areas. The overall objective of Phase II is to design, develop, fabricate, and demonstrate a complete, low-cost, low-power-consumption, portable, and fieldable FUVLC prototype system for curing UV-curable coatings over curved surfaces in Air Force applications. The prototype system will be tested in a high-fidelity laboratory or simulated operational environment. In Phase I POC successfully demonstrated to the U.S. Navy the feasibility of the FUVLC concept by developing handheld prototypes to cure various visible-light-curable coating samples. In Phase II POC plans to optimize the design for U.S. Air Force coating applications and to fabricate and integrate an engineering prototype of FUVLC at Technology Readiness Level 6 (TRL-6) that meets Air Force requirements for curing coatings, and of various sizes and configurations in actual field applications.