Build your exposure unit with LED lights for screen printing with IKEA furniture

In this article I am going to teach you how to build your exposure unit with LED lights for screen printing with the help of an IKEA piece of furniture, don't worry if you don't have an Ikea nearby we will also give you the measurements so you can do it another way.

In our article how to build an exposure unit for 50€ we explain how to make your exposure unit with a 500w halogen light, luckily technology has advanced and today we can get LED lights in many stores at a very good price.

I think not everyone has the knowledge or tools at home to cut wood or make holes, and thinking about this idea I came to believe that using a prefabricated piece of furniture was the best option to make a drawer quickly.

At Ikea I found the Komplement wardrobe drawer model with the perfect dimensions to use as a box for our exposure unit.

Below is a list of the products we will need for our exposure unit, you can find the products on Amazon.

To start, we must assemble the Ikea drawer according to the instructions given by the manufacturer. It is very easy to do.

Once we have the box assembled, we are going to cut and place our UV LED strips. We will cut them at the scissors icon that we will see on them, making strips of 55-56 centimeters.

In total we must have 7 LED light strips and we must attach them to the box about 6-7cm apart from each other, try to keep them centered. To attach the LED strips to the box we can use double-sided tape or stick them directly by removing the paper covering the strip's adhesive.

Now we have our box and our strips attached, let's connect them together. 

If we have connectors with a head at each end, we simply have to place the LED strip in the head.

If our connectors only have a head on one end of the wires, we must strip the wire on the other end and connect it with a terminal block to another wire.

VERY IMPORTANT
We must take into account the positive/negative of the wires, so we have to connect them by colors as in the following image.

Now we just need to connect the wires to the female connector that will go to the power source, we must take into account the positive/negative as indicated on the green part of the connector. In our case, the red wire is positive and the black wire is negative.

Now we have everything ready, we just have to plug it into the power with a 12v power adapter and we can use it. 

With the Murakami Aquasol emulsion, the exposure time with a homemade photolith is 2 minutes.