What Is Color Measurement for Paints and Coatings?

Color measurement of paint evaluates the overall quality of coatings and paint products. It grades color consistency across production lines and helps ensure that manufacturers maintain consistent quality and recognizable colors for day-to-day output.

Coating colors evaluation is critical to ensuring overall production quality. This process can help ensure safety and consistent results from the painting or coating mixtures. Meeting industrial standards and consumer expectations is vital to building engagement across markets.

Key benefits of accurate paint color measurement include:

• Boosted brand reputation: By maintaining consistently reliable color standards, you can help distinguish your brand among consumers and build user loyalty.
• Maximized quality control: Ensuring your paint colors are consistent helps ensure you're delivering high-quality products with every batch.
• Cost-effective management: Maintaining quality standards before your products go out to consumers helps prevent liability and deepens engagement and sales.

What Our Tools Measure

Our tools offer advanced capabilities to measure a range of paint and coating applications. These include:

• Industrial coatings: We offer solutions to measure industrial coating quality standards, helping to maintain brand integrity for various industrial equipment and products.
• Architectural coatings: For coatings for industrial complexes, bridges and a range of other structures, our tools can accurately measure quality and maintain consistent color standards.
• Coil coatings: Offering measurements for various commercial and consumer appliance coatings, our tools help ensure that the colors of these products stay consistent and distinctive.

Types of Paint and Coating Color Measurement Instruments

We offer several measurement instruments that work best for industrial, architectural and coil paints and coatings.

Agera

Our Agera instrument provides simultaneous measurement of reflected color, 60-degree gloss, and image capture with a five-megapixel camera, all in one measurement using 0º/45ºc circumferential geometry and it measures from 360 nm to 700 nm for superior accuracy and consistency. The gloss measurement offers International gloss standard conformance to ASTM D523 and ISO 2813 with Certificates of Traceability.

This tool is also equipped with several port plates, including an extra-large port plate for the biggest fixed-point contact area of measurement in the industry. The EasyMatch Essentials QC software comes embedded with essential color and gloss scales and indices, including CIE L*a*b*, Hunter L,a,b, CIE L*C*h, and 60-degree gloss.

Delivering advanced flexibility and user-friendly features, this equipment can measure industrial coating colors seamlessly. Its innovative data management capabilities help ensure quality control maintenance and documentation via intuitive features and software. It also offers a modern user interface to facilitate straightforward, convenient day-to-day operations. Built-in Wi-Fi, email, ESB and Ethernet connectivity allow you to streamline sensitive data communications via the device.

MiniScan EZ 4500

Small, compact and portable, the MiniScan EZ 4500 can go wherever your sample needs are. It's available in 45°/0° and diffuse/8° geometry systems, each with large or small area view options, and it measures the visible spectrum from 400 nm to 700 nm with 10 nm resolution. Its data views include color data, color plot, color difference data, spectral plot, spectral difference plot, spectral data and spectral data difference.

The software has parameters for color scales, indices, illuminate and observer specifications, standard values, pass/fail tolerances and averaging for inconsistent samples. Some common scales and indices included are CIE L*a*b*, Hunter L,a,b, opacity and color strength average.

The MiniScan EZ 4500 is a popular choice for measuring paint chip samples. Its compact, ergonomic design delivers user-friendly capabilities to match your requirements. One-handed operation and thumb-tip function navigation allow you to manage measurement on-site for various applications. The rubberized, lightweight handle helps to reduce operator fatigue and streamline measurement processes. With versatile features and a state-of-the-art interface, the MiniScan EZ 4500 makes daily operations more productive and straightforward.

SpectraTrend HT

The SpectraTrend HT is an in-process/in-line spectrophotometer and colorimeter for continuous color measurement data. It's configurable to display real-time data, making it ideal for use throughout your production run to allow you to achieve faster responses to color variations. The device is a popular choice for coil coatings.

SpectraTrend HT can be a standalone operation or easily integrated into plant control networks. With rugged features, it's designed to withstand harsh production environments. It features enhanced protection and sturdy construction, so you can take it on-site for measurement requirements. Wherever you need to operate, you can depend on this device for consistently high performance.

Color scales and indices built into the software include CIE L*a*b*, Hunter L,a,b, Colorant Strength and Shade Number. This system is compatible with a range of Total Quality Management Programs, including:

• DMAIC
• LQM
• Six Sigma
• PAT

Supporting the goal of decreasing waste and optimizing product quality, this seamless system delivers the advanced capabilities you need to optimize daily workflow. The device can also provide continuous product height monitoring to help manage Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) across your production lines.

Contact HunterLab for Your Paint and Coating Color Measurement Tools

If you need color measurement for paint and coating, HunterLab has the precise tools for your applications. All of our color measurement tools are compliant with industry standards and come equipped with our powerful software that features essential color scales, indices and metrics.

For over 65 years, HunterLab has been delivering trusted product solutions for color measurement. Our industry-leading products are fast, accurate and user-friendly for your applications.

When you buy paint and coating color measurement instruments from HunterLab, you can trust that you're investing in a superior tool that will help you quickly identify and reduce color variations for superior processes and results.

If you have questions or would like more information about any of our products, contact us today.

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