Advances in Colour Measurement of Effect Pigments

Advances in Colour Measurement of Effect Pigments

With more than three-quarters of automotive colours in the world styled with effect pigments, automakers and their suppliers are on the cutting edge of how to measure colours of effect pigments for quality assurance at receiving and quality control in production.  The lessons learned by the automotive industry can be readily applied to other industries that use effect pigments in printing, powder coating of metal furniture and appliances, and cosmetics.

The discussion will provide a short overview of the different families of effect pigments and detail some of the difficulties that manufacturers face as they try to obtain reliable and reproducible colour measurement data using standard spectrophotometers and colourimeters due to the unique colour-flop characteristics of effect pigments.

After outlining the challenges, the discussion will provide best practices that companies use today to determine accurate and reliable colour measurement data, give new international standards of measurement, and offer a sense of where instrument manufacturers are headed to improve results further.