Paint & Coatings Industry - March 2008 - (Page 83a)

Color Management – CCI and X-Rite Accuracy on the A s one of the world’s largest manufacturers of color cards and color systems, Chicago-based Color Communications Inc. (CCI) specializes in exact duplication of the colors consumers see when they apply paints and stains to the interior and exteriors of their homes. Over the past 35 years, CCI has produced billions of color merchandising products for companies around the globe, such as the paint chips offered by the paint manufacturers at home improvement retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s to the paint samples in brochures and displays used in automotive showrooms enabling consumers to select the color of their new cars and trucks. True to its reputation as an innovator, CCI has recently employed an X-Rite inexpensive in-line, noncontact spectrophotometer that provides laboratory accuracy in reading colors on the factory floor. The company estimates that the instrument will pay for itself in less than a year through savings in scrap, equipment downtime and labor costs. CCI employs more than 500 people at its main Chicago facility and an Auckland, New Zealand plant. The company’s work is so precise that some color tools produced by CCI are used by its customers as standards for their internal color quality control. “Customers come to us because they have a need for accurate color,” said Jerald Dimas, Vice PresidentTechnical at CCI. “There is a premium cost to our product because of that accuracy. You can’t print colors using four-color process printing for an accurate representation. We use the actual paint in our process. That’s one of our competitive advantages: Highspeed production with a high degree of accuracy.” than 20,000 such measurements in the last eight months alone. The costs of quality add up quickly because part of the production run is spoiled by taking the sample, and the equipment remains idle during the testing process. In addition, quality control personnel spend time conducting the tests and transporting samples to and from the factory floor. By multiplying the resources expended to test one sample by the tens of thousands of tests it performs annually, CCI determined it had a great opportunity for cost savings and enhanced quality control practices. To pursue this opportunity, CCI agreed to act as one of a number of beta test sites this past year for a new-generation spectrophotometer developed by X-Rite that can measure samples without destructive testing, match the accuracy of lab-confined spectrophotometers on a relative basis, and withstand the harsh environments of a factory floor. Cost – A Key Factor And there was one final key to make the system work for CCI: cost. By using innovations from a variety of industries, X-Rite offers the instrument at less than $20,000 a unit, nearly one-fifth the cost of other lab-bound or non-contact spectrophotometers. Michigan-based X-Rite, the world’s largest manufacturer of color measuring instruments, has begun introduction of the product worldwide following its successful trials at CCI. “When we first started looking at non-contact spectrophotometers, everything was in excess of $100,000,” Dimas said. “We were still looking at them to see if they could pay for themselves, but the cost really didn’t look that attractive at those prices. “With the VeriColor® Spectro, the return on investment is excellent. There isn’t a reason not to use this sort of equipment in the factory now.” Ensuring Color Quality To ensure color quality during a production run, CCI technicians take test samples by stopping the equipment, cutting the desired sample from the production roll and conducting spectrophotometer tests. A highprofile project for Akzo Nobel Coatings required more VeriColor Spectro System CCI uses the VeriColor Spectro system to measure color at a distance of up to 4 inches from the By Matthew Gryczan, Vice President | Seyferth Spaulding Tennyson, Inc., Grand Rapids, MI 2 MARCH 2008 | W W W . P C I M A G . C O M http://WWW.PCIMAG.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Paint & Coatings Industry - March 2008

Viewpoint Industry News Calendar of Events Company News Mergers and Acquisitions Names in the News Marketplace Quarterly Stock Watch Reaching Strict VOC Requirements With Outstanding Durability for Industrial Maintenance and Marine Coatings A Unique Fungicide for Wood-Filled Plastic deSigns of the Times: Slacking Off! From Rocks to Nanos Shear-Free Dispersion Process Fluorinated Oxetane Oligomers as Versatile Intermediates for Polymer Modification The Effects of TPO Composition on Adhesion and Proposed Chemical Mechanism Supplier Showcase Color Management Materials Watch Products Classifieds Advertiser Index

Paint & Coatings Industry - March 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.