UV Light Box for Making Platinum/Paladium Prints, Kallitypes, and Van Dyke Prints
I built my UV box with a useable interior surface area of 19" x 26". No wiring or soldering was required since the box uses ready-to-use plug-in UV bars instead of conventional bulbs that require ballasts. Everything other than the lights were purchased from Home Depot. Here are the parts that I used, along with their dimensions and assembly notes. Tim Layton uses the same bars and has excellent results producing platinum/palladium prints (however, the spacing in his box is different, in that he places his bars 3.5” apart, and the height of his box is shallower than mine).
Lights: Barrina UV LED Blacklight Bar, 9W 2ft, T5 Integrated Bulbs (from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1). I ordered two sets of four bars each, and ended up using six of them.
Base and lid of box: cut from two 2' x 4' sheets of smooth birch plywood
Four sides of box: cut from one 6' long 1"x8" premium pine board, clear of knots.
Hinge: Everbuilt brand continuous hinge 1.5" x 48" cut to length with my Dremel, but a hacksaw could also be used
Sheet metal screws for attaching hinge to lid: one package of pan head Phillips screws #10 x 2"
Machine screws and nuts for attaching hinge to box body: 12 screws with locking nuts were already on-hand in my shop
Wood screws for assembling sides and base to each other: 16 2" wood screws were already on-hand
Chain and 2 screw eyes for tilting lid back: hardware already on-hand
Electrical staples for attaching wires to lid: already on-hand
Power and hand tools used: table saw, miter saw, Dremel tool with metal cut-off wheel, drill and regular bits, countersink bit for wood screws, forstner bit for drilling out hole for wire to pass through, Phillips screw driver, socket wrench for tightening locking nuts, drywall square, ruler, pliers, sandpaper for smoothing board edges.
As stated above, the base of the box has a useable interior surface area of 19" x 26". The board dimensions are as follows:
Base: 27.5" x 20.5"
Lid : 29.5" x 21.5" (the lid extends 1" over the sides and front to make it easy to open it without adding handle hardware)
Sides: 19" x 7.5"
Front and back: 27.5" x 7.5"
Assembly Notes:
(1) The sides are attached to the "inside" area (i.e., to the flat surface) of the base, not to the "outside" 3/4" edges of the base. This means the distance between the base and lid within the box is 7.5".
(2) I placed 6 bulb bars 2.5" from one another, measured from side to side (NOT measured from center point to center point of the bars' placements). I will experiment to determine if there is any need to change the distance between the bulbs in case of any banding (which I don’t expect). I can also place risers below my print frames to reduce their distance to the UV bulbs in order to adjust exposure times as I wish for different processes.
(3) The machine screws and locking nuts used to attach the lid hinge to the base of the box could be substituted with shallow 3/4" wood screws if desired (especially if the chain is installed to prevent the heavy lid from falling all the way backwards, potentially yanking the hinge away from the box), but I prefer the extra stability. Depending on where the furthest left and right holes on the hinge line up on the base of the box, you may need to use wood screws regardless, as you may not be able to use locking nuts at the far edges.