Colour and Appearance Measurement of Plastics products

QC and formulation of films, foils, sheets, pellets, or plastic parts

Colour and Appearance Measurement of Plastics Products


Master the colour of your plastics products to meet quality standards

The appearance of plastic products is a key quality parameter with an undeniable influence on the customer's purchase decision. The appearance of many plastic products typically involves not only colour and opacity, but also gloss and surface texture. Whether the plastic product is opaque or translucent, flat, curved, thin, or thick, offering appealing colours, delivering products in the correct colour, and delivering consistency are expected from the modern plastic producer.


Offering a wide range of colours or custom colours within specification is a proven way to build supply chain relationships and grow your business.


Konica Minolta is a solution provider for the plastic industry, offering colour measurement instruments, colour data and matching software, innovative gloss meters, and controlled lighting cabinets for visual assessment.

Our experts can help you to implement measurement and control processes that will benefit your business.

  • Improve product quality
  • Reduce costs and waste
  • Improve communication with supply chain partners, building relationships based on collaboration and improvement


Digital colour and appearance data can be used to expedite the supply process, greatly improving companies' ability to react to the market by reducing the risks and costs associated with producing, distributing, and maintaining physical standards, subjective specification, and approval processes with customers.

Colour measurement, applied when visiting with customers, agreeing specifications with suppliers, in plastic product innovation development laboratories, benchmarking industry competitors, or reporting for internal quality control programs, can build supply chain relationships based on quality, consistency, and reducing subjectivity from specification and approval.

Konica Minolta has a dedicated team of experts responsible for implementing, training, optimising, and customising our computer colour matching and digital colour data platform Colibri®.
Colibri® is a modular digital colour data platform that allows companies to develop and grow their systems as necessary, with specialised modules for all functions of the colour supply chain. Owners can build libraries and share data and functions securely with supply partners via cloud or on-premises infrastructure. Benefitting from Colibri®’s advanced algorithm, colour producers can greatly simplify matching and correction steps, easily switch in our materials or colourants as dictated by the market or supply chain. By improving colour communication, owners can dramatically save time, and reduce waste and rejects.


Konica Minolta benchtop spectrophotometers provide operators with the ability to measure all manner of samples both in reflectance in transmittance, whether these are films, foils, sheets, pellets, or plastic parts. Whilst customers, who require portability, are well served by close tolerance instruments like the CM-26dG or for textured plastic producers (like the automotive industry) the CM-25cG.

Our partnership with Rhopoint instruments and Just Normlicht GmbH (light cabinet) offers our customers access to innovative solutions for gloss measurement and a range of controlled lighting assessment solutions.

Benefits

  • Drive innovation through unrivalled colour management
  • Achieve tight tolerances according to respective standards
  • Deliver colour on time and on demand
  • Meet customer's needs and specifications
  • Speed up processes and decrease number of corrections
  • Strengthen brand identity

Instruments

Instruments

CM-36dG Benchtop Spectrophotometer

A high-precision benchtop instrument capable of measuring colour either in reflectance or transmittance, ideally suited to a wide range of plastic products. Konica Minolta has integrated an ISO 2813 compliant 60° gloss sensor, to provide simultaneous measurement of colour and gloss.

CM-26dG Portable Spectrophotometer

A close tolerance portable instrument for high-precision colour and gloss measurement of smooth or textured samples. The instrument is built around a user-friendly UI, colour display, and sample viewer port to maximise efficiency and cut operator errors.

CM-5 Benchtop Spectrophotometer

The standalone benchtop, with an integrated large colour display and operator wizard, is a perfect solution for lab colour measurements of solid, granular, powdered, or liquid samples. The top facing measurement port and large transmittance chamber facilitate efficient and repeatable processes.  

CM-700d Portable Spectrophotometer

Portable instrument with vertical alignment that allows for precise positioning of measurement aperture and minimal contact to the subject. Measure with a 3mm or 8mm aperture and transfer data via Bluetooth to colour data software.

Light Booth

Light Cabinets in various configurations for visual assessment of colour samples using classic filament lamps & fluorescent tubes or LED/Hybrid technology illumination.

Colibri® Platform

Quality Control and Colour Matching Software Colibri® offers plastic producers exceptional correction efficiency and expedites development of new recipes. Colibri® offers a comprehensive, accurate and secure solution for the colour supply chain.

Rhopoint Gloss and Appearance measurement

Rhopoint test instruments include gloss meters, hazemeters / goniophotometer, DOI (orange peel), TAMS, etc. to measure the appearance and the gloss surface of finished products. 

Applications

Applications

Measurement with the CM-36dG

The CM-36dG can measure solid or liquid samples in reflectance or transmission mode, horizontally or upside down. This offers great flexibility for various samples ranging from opaque to translucent and transparent. The large, open sided transmission chamber can be used to measure transparent or translucent samples of any size with ease.

Measurement with the CM-26dG

With its lightweight ergonomic design, optional Bluetooth™ and high-resolution TFT colour display, the CM-26d series is perfectly suited for applications in the field. It offers great flexibility of use with two easily interchangeable measurement apertures with Ø 8 mm (MAV) and Ø 3 mm (SAV). The two lens position settings guarantee perfect data correlation with both apertures, enabling measurement of all sample sizes and shapes.

Measurement with the CM-5

Thanks to the unique concept and a wide range of special accessories, the CM-5 can handle almost any kind of samples in solid, granule, pasty, or liquid form. Aperture size from 3 – 30 mm, different Petri-dishes, different cell paths, and a large transmittance chamber offer a unique flexibility.
Individual user set-ups as well as target and measurement data can be easily stored on USB memory stick to allow multi-user capability.

Measurement of Plastic molded parts

With the portable spectrophotometer CM-26dG or CM-700d, it is possible to control the colour of measured objects with free curved surfaces and irregularities, including molded plastic parts. The CM-26dG allows to measure the colour value and gloss value at the same time, as well as the piano black with high accuracy.

Measurement of Flate plate or Textured products

With the spectrophotometer CM-36dG (portable) or CM-5 (benchtop), the reflected colour of flat plates and textured plastics with irregularities can be managed and measured. The measuring instruments measure the transparency and haze of transparent and translucent plastics.
In addition, the CM-36dG can measure colour and gloss values ​​at the same time with one unit, improving measurement work efficiency.

Related Solutions

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