Electron Beam (E-beam)

ETAC helps businesses evaluate and test the use of electron beam technology to improve their manufacturing processes.

• About Electron Beam
• Industrial Uses of Electron Beam
• How Electron Beam Technology Can Benefit Your Business
• Learn about ETAC's electron beam specialists: Alfred E. Fuchs, Terry Hafford, Roger Price, Preston L. Roberts and Dr. Mike Vasilik.
• Send a question to an ETAC electron beam expert. ETAC experts will answer electron beam questions every Friday, or sooner if necessary.

About Electron Beam

The electron beam (e-beam) unit is compact, efficient, reliable and easy to operate and maintain. It can fit into many new applications, such as post-curing of inks and varnishes on flexographic printing presses. The e-beams are engineered so that all the accelerator components are in one unit. The emitter is in a compact and hermetically-sealed enclosure without active vacuum pumps. This enables easy installation and satisfies the rapid maintenance capability that industry requires today.

Industrial Uses of Electron Beam
E-beam technology is used for welding, melting, vaporizing and heat treating metals, and polymerization and cross-linking of organic materials and coatings. Industrial product applications include:

• Solid films or deposits, such as coatings, inks, adhesives and plastics
• Printing processes that use higher press speeds, are energy-efficient and use less expensive inks
• Wood moldings, sidings, board stock and frames
• Metal tubing, wire extrusions and containers
• Plastic tubing, PVC extrusions and sheet goods
• Fiber optics
• Paper and fabrics
• Food and medical sterilization and packaging, as well as shelf-life extension

How Electron Beam Technology Can Benefit Your Business
Some of the many advantages that electron beam technology can offer your manufacturing products or processes include:

• Improved physical properties, such as increased exterior durability and high rub-resistance, due to the depth of cure and improved ultraviolet light stability.
• Improved adhesion on a variety of substrates.
• Ability to cure higher thickness coatings or inks with high pigment content.
• Ability to cure inks, coatings and adhesives sandwiched between several layers of opaque materials, which often occurs in the food packaging industry.
• Elimination of heat damage to printing substrates, since electron beam curing is a "cold-curing" process.
• Higher press speeds due to faster curing of thicker or more opaque inks or coatings.
• Low training and labor costs, and reduced ink and coating costs are a possibility, since the use of a photo-initiator is not required for most curing scenarios.
• Decreased number of toxic byproducts, such as volatile organic chemicals, due to thorough cure and absence of a photo-initiator.
• Higher energy efficiency when compared to other curing technologies.

To learn more about how electron beam technology can benefit your business, contact us.