UV gurus - a little help, please.

Hi folks,

I have a UV drop-in of unknown pedigree, and it generated quite a bit of interest at the local gun shop.

I use it to charge up glow-in-the-dark fishing lures as well, and it works fairly well, but I think it could do better - a neutral Xeno does the job in less time.

Could the folks with more UV LED experience please chime in to suggest the correct wavelength needed for GITD charging, as well as fluorescing the appropriate materials with the least visible light output ?

Thanks !!!

I think my Photo mini UV light is 370nm. This works with the strips in money. It has very little visible light.

Blacklights are closer to 400 nm or so I think and are mostly visible of course.

Lower wavelengths work best for money and ID inspection work, but I have found they do very little for just glowing stuff around the house. I used a low nm Arc-AAA once to try and glow-charge my watch lume and to my surprise it didn’t really do anything. I have found the cheapy UV showerhead lights on Amazon and other places work best for this… glow charging stuff. Most don’t even advertise a specific wavelength.

As Kramer mentions the more visible end of the range does more for most fluorescing other than specific items so when you say you want the least visible light you are at cross purposes basically.

My UV light fluoresces is than my larger plug-in blacklight which triggers laundry detergent, paper and tennis balls like crazy.

I have a custom modded Uniqufire X8 with a 365nm LedEngin led with wood’s glass filter. Absolutely no visible light emission, and I gotta say besides engineering inspection (which I originally built it for) and money/id use it isn’t actually good for much else, maybe mineral fluorescing. But for charging GITD items my best is my P60 UV led module in a host. It’s direct drive and runs 600 mA with a fully charged 18650. It’s one of those generic UV modules, probably a 405nm unit.

I use one of the cheap blue lasers. They charge up GITD stuff instantly.

[video: http://www.youtube.com/v/duklO3TsbhA?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0 ]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duklO3TsbhA

Wow! That is cool.

It depends a lot on what material they are using to make the GITD objects but 405nm wavelength lights seem to work best on most stuff.
I have a few GITD o-rings on some of my lights and I can make them glow by exposing them to almost any kind visible light. Kinda like the markers in my watch. Almost anything works.

How about a cap/enclosure for your bezel? Slip in the lure, cover, and fish with just your edc.

405nm is great. And the device that produces the most of that (and most efficiently) is 405nm lasers. (from blu-rays). It will trash any UV based LED flashlight, no doubt. Charges GITD like there is no tomorrow. Just a 0.5seconds flash is good. Reason is that there is a whole lot more output from a cheap 200mW 405nm laser (that’s optical output rated) than a 3W rated LED 405nm LED. (that’s so-called electrically rated)

Can get some from o-like or lazerer.

They say lazerer is good.

Oh…you are in the USA. Check out survival lasers, laserpointer forums. It can get through …coz it is in parts like any other hobby parts so it’s not considered a laser, and just takes 15 mins to assemble. Overseas is an issue.

405nm 400mW laser, lens taken out so it spreads out more.

You want to sell to the gun guys? 405nm is pretty dangerous a wavelength. So you migth not want to go too high up there in the power even with a diffused laser coherent light.

Ok.,….just a comparison, i have the Tank007 3W 365nm UV LED. The output/flurorescence of this thing pales in output of the 400mW 405nm laser. At least in the order of 20X or perhaps even more.

I have the bigger brother of this. hkequipment has a good price compared to aliexpress.