X-Rite Pantone is excited to exhibit at K 2022. Like many of you, digitization and sustainability are top of mind. We invite you to stop by our booth to see how an end-to-end lifecycle that focuses on color can help you:
- Fulfill your customers’ color demands
- Ensure color consistency with varying batches of recycled raw material
- Accelerate material color and appearance approval
- Minimize color surprises at delivery
- Actively decrease your global footprint
The Key to Sustainability is Digitization
To compete in today’s market, plastics brands, suppliers, and manufacturers must master digital color across a connected value chain. This means replacing prototypes with 3D virtual representations, utilizing recycled raw materials, achieving accurate formulations the first time, and monitoring color accuracy throughout production to catch color drift early.
Digitizing color and applying color management at each stage will ultimately pay for itself through effective color communication, faster production with less waste, and customer loyalty. It will also help us protect our planet.
At K 2022, we will be showcasing end-to-end solutions that span the color lifecycle, from specification through design, formulation, production, and quality control. Whether you’re a brand, designer, compounder, masterbatcher, extruder, molder, or just interested in learning what’s important for the plastics industry, we encourage you to stop by.
See an End-to-End Workflow That Focuses on Color at K 2022
Our booth is designed to walk you through the key steps in a plastics color workflow. Here’s what you’ll see and learn.
Design
Seamlessly navigate from digital to physical environments and back again while maintaining consistent, accurate color. With Pantone and X-Rite solutions, you can capture inspiration color, build digital color palettes using custom and Pantone colors, evaluate color output, and ensure the final product is visually acceptable. Plus, Pantone colors are compatible with X-Rite’s color measurement solutions.
Benefits
- Specify accurate color using both physical and digital standards
- Share digital color specifications across a global supply chain
- Generate spectral data for the most precise starting point possible
Learn more about Pantone’s solutions for digital color.
Visualization
Bridge the gap between a physical and a virtual color workflow by eliminating the need to develop physical samples and prototypes. With X-Rite solutions, users can measure physical samples with a spectrophotometer or import spectral samples and render the original texture, the original color, and the combined result on a 3D model. You can also store, manage, view, edit, and render digital samples on actual prototypes for review and approval.
Benefits
- Generate fast approval without the time and material waste of prototypes
- Economically present a wide range of color and appearance options
- Identify color issues before production begins by applying to a virtual replica that includes different surfaces, curves, edges, and levels of transparency
Learn more about the power of exchanging physical samples into digital color data.
Specification
Once the color palette is confirmed, digitally specify the color’s spectral data and tolerances to create a digital standard for reproduction. This requires a highly accurate spectrophotometer with tight inter-instrument agreement. It is also important that everyone uses the same make and model of spectrophotometer to avoid color inconsistency, which is often caused by using different devices to specify, produce, and control color.
Benefits
- Set realistic expectations
- Empower suppliers to work with confidence
- Establish a spectral data audit trail for formulation and production QC to ensure consistency
Learn more about the importance of inter-instrument agreement.
Formulation
The same spectral data that is measured during specification can be used in formulation software to calculate fast and accurate recipes. Developing a new color with the help of color formulation software can reduce the number of formulation iterations from 12+ to less than 3. Not only does this decrease time in the manufacturing supply chain, it also dramatically increases waste and the carbon footprint of the supply chain formulating, correcting, and shipping samples back and forth.
Benefits
- Increase the percentage of acceptable first matches by up to 50%
- Work-off recycled materials and leftover materials in future formulations
- Understand color achievability before formulation begins
Learn how to accelerate masterbatch formulation.
Production
Measuring incoming raw and recycled materials with a color measurement spectrophotometer can provide the spectral data needed to formulate accurate recipes and reject off-color lots. A spectrophotometer can also be used throughout production to compare samples against the standard to ensure color is still within tolerance at each stage of production. Inline color measurement solutions monitor color on the line throughout production and alert operators if color moves out-of-spec so corrections can be made before there is waste.
Benefits
- Notify operators of color drift before it causes an issue
- Streamline approvals, only sending samples that are within specified tolerance
- Enable multiple sites to work toward the same production goals
Learn more about inline color measurement for plastics.
Quality Control
Even with the right tools, ensuring accurate, consistent color across a global supply chain can be challenging. Quality control software ties it all together. QC software uses spectral measurements to compare production color to the standard to ensure it stays in tolerance from formulation through shipment. It can also generate color data performance reports so brands and suppliers can see a real-time view of production quality.
Benefits
- Compare production color against spectral data for clear pass/fail results
- Evaluate color accuracy from formulation through production to shipment
- Keep the global supply chain informed and accountable
Learn how to use digital standards in a quality control workflow.
We Look Forward to Meeting You at K 2022!
We hope you’ll stop by our booth in Hall 8B, Stand A73 to say hello and see our featured solutions for plastics. You can also schedule a meeting with an X-Rite Plastics Color Expert to ask questions and get personalized color advice for your business.
