X-Rite InLine Color and Gloss Measurement Systems – Coil Coating

Coil Coating, inline colour and gloss measurement, focusing on speed, quality and accuracy to achieve maximum cost advantage, is a highly effective field. The Coil Coating process has enabled companies to manufacture durable and high-quality products for over 30 years. However, to achieve cost advantage, speed, quality and accuracy must be the focus. Coil Coating provides manufacturers with a way to paint metal while still in sheet form. This is very important, because attempting to paint metal after parts have been formed, makes it difficult to achieve uniform coating The Coil Coating process is fast and errors must be caught immediately to avoid expensive waste. X-Rite's Coil Coating Inline Colour and Gloss Measurement System consists of TeleFlash® 445 Inline Spectrophotometer and GlossFlash 6060 Inline Gloss Meter systems to help the manufacturer ensure consistency in colour and gloss in real time at every stage of the process.

Coil Coating Process

Coil coating is fast - coil strips move at speeds up to 200 metres per minute! Every step is critical to producing superior colour quality and coating consistency. To briefly outline the process steps; 1. Coil strip is unwound, cleaned and brushed. 2. Chemical treatment is applied and the strip is dried. 3. A primer is applied to one or both sides of the strip. 4. The strip then passes through an oven, is removed and cooled. 5. Coating is applied to one or both sides of the strip. 6. The strip passes through a second curing oven and is cooled. 7. Finally, the coated coil is wound back up. Many things can go wrong at each step in the process. • Paint variations can cause metamerism, where colour may appear correct under one type of lighting but changes under different lighting conditions. • Paint gloss affects how the colour appears, making it appear lighter or darker. • Changes in paint thickness also affect colour. To ensure uniformity, coating must be consistent throughout the process. • When you add the fast pace of the production line to this, you can understand why it is difficult for coil coating manufacturers to meet strong colour standards.

Five-Step Solution to Control Colour

X-Rite has developed an inline system to monitor the entire coil coating process. By using the TeleFlash® 445 Inline Spectrophotometer together with the GlossFlash 6060 Gloss Measurement Device, manufacturers can measure colour and gloss with high precision at every step – creating and documenting final quality control reports in the laboratory and on the production line. 1. Control begins in the laboratory where a laboratory spectrophotometer with a heating-cooling table helps formulate and define coil coating colour standards. A heating-cooling system is used to show how temperature changes will affect colour, with the standard measured at different temperatures. In this way, a set is created relating to colour differences that the same colour standard may produce at different temperature conditions on the production line. For colour control, the value of the standard colour under the current production temperature conditions is taken, ensuring comparisons are made over the correct colour. This procedure is called thermochromism compensation. 2. After the colour standard is set, the paint supplier, workstations in the production control cabin, the colour coating line and the customer all share it, ensuring that every user has access to the same colour data. 3. Once the Coil Coating process begins, the X-Rite Colour and Gloss Measurement systems continuously evaluate the colour quality of the entire length and width of each coil using left-centre-right measurements. The moving fixture holds the inline spectrophotometer vertically and horizontally, allowing it to measure as the coil moves. Since spectrophotometer measurements are taken from a certain distance from the coil, the instrument and coil remain safe even under the harshest conditions. This process also ensures accurate measurement of non-flat coil surfaces. 4. Results are shared in real time, so everyone on the network can monitor colour quality and consistency. When colour tolerance is exceeded, charts and alerts will ensure everyone is aware before colour deviations turn into costly errors. 5. The X-Rite Coil Coating Inline Colour Measurement System provides complete documentation in the form of colour quality records based on international standards to ensure programme integrity and customer satisfaction. Best of all, everything happens without having to stop or slow down the production line, so coil coating manufacturers do not have to choose between accuracy and production schedules.   Anıl Gündem Güven InLine and Industrial Sales Manager Odak Kimya    

InLine Colour and Gloss Measurement with TeleFlash® 445 and GlossFlash 6060