A New Rochelle, NY-based manufacturer of alkyd-based paints and wood stains needed a solution that would reduce color matching time and improve color matching quality.
This customer had used a contact Spectrophotometer to measure alkyd-based paint and wood stain products in the dry state for quality control and color matching. While this works well for wood stain products, due to the longer drying times of alkyd based coatings, this customer decided to manually match the color of these products by eye as it would save them a lot of time.
X-Rite's local sales team demonstrated the VS450 Spectrophotometer using Color iMatch color matching software to customers. The instrument easily measures wet paint scrapes and wet paint (applied on wooden tongue depressors) and speeds up their quality control and color matching process while improving color matching quality.
Customers are particularly interested in one feature of the Color iMatch color matching software. The software measures dry and wet samples while compensating for color differences between dry and wet sample appearances during the initial color matching process using the "L Adjust" function.
Like many companies in the industry, the client also accounts for its capital expenditures. What they valued, however, was the value of X-Rite's new solution. The obvious return on investment (ROI) for this solution is reduced drying time, which is a big problem for many manufacturers of alkyd-based coatings.
The alkyd-based coating segment is one of the desirable target markets for the VS450.
Tech Tips
Separation of the pigment from the resin can cause "flocculation" of some paints stored in cans. This results in an uneven surface color, forming circles of pigment. When paint is first formulated and put into a paint shaker, it takes a while for the paint to de-air the air, which can also change the appearance of the paint. Both of these conditions make measuring paint in cans very difficult.
The solution was to measure paint scrapes on Leneta cardboard rather than paint in cans.
