[Brent Deines]

Barry,

I tested the outside lite of glass only as all the repairs we do are on the outside lite of a windshield.

I used a 365nm producing UV light. The 365nm wavelength is of course longwave UVA.

While I certainly respect your results, I believe our tests are a bit more sophisticated. We use a digital radiometer to do all of our UV light and sunlight testing, and the results are quite revealing. Without a radiometer, you have no way to know for sure how much energy your light is putting out, or even what wavelength is being used for that matter. You also have no way to accurately test how much UV a windshield or UV shield blocks.

I am not an expert on such things, but I have consulted many experts on the subject over the years. A former technical adviser for PPG AutoGlass told me that solar green laminated glass, now used in most automobile windshields, blocks approximately 85% of UVA rays and 99% of UVB rays. He was in fact the one who alerted me to the fact that cure times should be increased when curing through solar green glass. Up until that time I advocated a 2 minute cure time, which as I said, is sufficient depending on the light used, but there are many technicians using battery operated lights that do not produce the energy to cure properly in that amount of time. I would encourage you to contact a glass manufacturer, or spend the money to purchase a radiometer and do a bit more testing yourself before you pronounce your results to be conclusive.

If you want to cure your repairs for 2 minutes or 2 seconds that's your business, but I want it to be very clear that Delta Kits advocates a longer curing cycle, and we advocate spending as much time as is necessary on each repair to properly replace "all" the air from a break with a high quality windshield repair resin. I feel it is irresponsible to limit the repair process to 5 minutes, and frankly take exception to that fact that you used this forum to promote that practice.