INSTRUMENTATION | COLOUR MEASUREMENT
Data defining the colour of plastic materials is required faster and more accurately than ever. Mark Holmes explores the latest developments
Digitising the colour workflow
The need for effective communication of digital colour data around multiple global locations — and throughout the entire plastics supply chain — is a key driver for innovation in the development of colour measurement. The global pandemic and current material supply problems have accentuated the issue, which manufacturers of equipment for colour measurement aim to resolve. The plastics compounding industry continues to
move rapidly towards digital colour workflows regarding colour management, according to X-Rite, which says Covid-19 has created significant new challenges for brands needing to communi- cate colour targets and control colour consistency. “It is critical for compounders and masterbatchers to investigate their full portfolio of colour needs, from integration of design needs, through recipe creation to control of production,” says Matthew Adby, Product Management Director. He says the company is seeing increasing demand to connect the stages of digital colour workflows to speed up the process and improve quality. “Key to a digital colour workflow is leverag- ing industry leading formats, such as X-Rite’s CxF (Color Exchange File) and AxF (Appearance Exchange File), to support colour and appearance communication. With a connected ecosystem of integrated colour measurement instrumentation and software, compounders and masterbatchers can access colour standards immediately and get to the right colour quickly while minimising colour errors and rework,” he says.
www.compoundingworld.com Adby highlights the increased use of recycled
materials as a further trend driving colour manage- ment advancement. In addition, he says there is a requirement for selection and identification of materials that are compatible with automotive sensor systems. Material storage challenges and rising costs have also forced many compounders to find new suppliers and ingredients, which calls for colour matching to optimise the balance of ingredients. Together these trends are driving a need for solutions that offer features such as automated measurement and selection, wider measurement capability, higher accuracy, and improved formula- tion and correction software (which, the company says, can help optimise usage of waste and recycled materials). X-Rite says that its Color iMatch software version 10.6 has introduced new functionality to assist users to find trials and perform matches to meet customer requirements better. This has included the addition of search and match with opacity functions and colour tolerancing, as well as filtering properties using material attribute tagging, for example temperature fastness, light fastness and thickness. It says use of colorant tagging and rules can help in handling recycled materials and improve management of components with regard to current supply chain issues. For inline colour control of plastic pellets, X-Rite‘s ERX130 system can operate in a closed loop system to provide on-the-fly colour correction based on the quality variance of recycled and raw materials.
Main image: Technology developers such as BYK-Gardner are developing high perfor- mance spectropho- tometers to measure colour “as it is seen“
� July 2022 | COMPOUNDING WORLD 35
IMAGE: BYK-GARDNER
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