Colour and Surface Measurement for Automotive Interiors
Specification, development, and testing of Interior materials including plastics, leather, carpets, metal, and more
Colour and Gloss Measurement Solutions for Quality Control of Automotive Interiors
Development, production, and QC solutions for control of the colour and appearance of interior plastics, carpets, metals, and leather
Automotive interiors include a variety of materials utilised in creating the cabin of modern automobiles. This includes plastics, textiles, metal, leather, and more.
Automotive interiors play a huge role in customer experience, branding, and positioning with these materials in direct contact with the customer and responsible for the perception of quality. The development and specification of these materials must be undertaken in parallel with the interior lighting in order to deliver an environment that is functional, projects quality, and avoids any undesired interactions between materials and light sources.
Digital colour and appearance data can be used to expedite the supply process, greatly improving an OEM’s ability to react to the market by reducing the costs and risks associated with producing, distributing, and maintaining physical standards.
The wide range of materials to be measured, including plastics, paint, textile, leather, glass, and metals, requires selection of the correct solution in terms of measurement geometry and usability.
Colour Measurement applied when visiting with supply partners, agreeing specifications, in development laboratories, in benchmarking against competitors or reporting for internal quality control programs can build supply relationships based on quality and consistency, reducing subjectivity in the colour production process.
Whether for development, process, or quality control for internal controls, colour specification, and communication with the supply chain, our expert team can help the automotive industry to accurately specify, produce, and communicate colour. Utilising Konica Minolta’s innovative and accurate measurement instruments with cutting edge software, producers can greatly improve the process, speed and outcomes of their colour workflow.
Konica Minolta and partner Rhopoint Instruments offer a compressive range of solutions to the automotive industry, aimed at producing consistent and quality components for the cabin. This helps automotive marques to improve the perceived quality of their products, ensuring a visually appealing interior environment by controlling the appearance of interior materials.
Konica Minolta has a dedicated team, experienced in delivering digital colour data systems to global supply chains, allowing organisations to specify and share colour standards with supply partners to centralise the colour matching, quality control, and approval of colours within their libraries. Our systems are supported by a global network of sales and expertise, and authorised service facilities that ensure your systems can be maintained with minimal downtime.
Benefits
- Save time and money with digital colour data by communicating digital colour standards directly from your library with supply chain partners, saving the cost and risk associated with physical master standards.
- Improve quality and lower working tolerances by centralising the colour supply chain and unifying suppliers on close tolerance colour measurement instruments.
- Reduce waste and save time by specifying and approving colours within a digital colour data system.
Instruments
Just Normlicht LED Color Viewing Light v8
LED based viewing light with standard illuminants for controlled viewing that can also be configured with user specified illuminants to match with effect lighting, ensuring that the combination of light and parts produces the desired visual effect for customers.
Applications
Measurement of Interior Plastics
OEMs are able to specify the colour for interior plastics and share the digital colour standards with supply chain partners who can use the same system for colour recipe prediction and later perform QC measurements against that standard. By specifying digital colour data standards and measuring with close tolerance instruments from Konica Minolta Sensing, tolerances can be tighter, and timescales shortened.
The 45-degree geometry of the CM-25cG ensures that the operator can match colours to other parts, irrespective of surface texture. Circumferential illumination eliminates directional dependency to minimise the influence of measurement position and rotation, particularly in frosted, textured, or structured surfaces commonly used in automotive plastics.
Measurement of Leather
The target colour for upholstery leather can be specified to the correct supply chain partners to match. The producer can match to the required colour and use a portable spectrophotometer to measure production samples and establish working tolerances and provide QC data back to the specifier.
Measurement of Small Curved Surfaces
The portable spectrophotometer CM-700d has a small measuring aperture and vertical alignment that makes it ideally suited to measuring on small and curved parts which would otherwise be difficult to accurately position a measuring instrument on.
Gloss can also be measured on these small and curved surfaces using the Rhopoint glossmeters, either the Rhopoint Novo-Gloss FLEX 60 or the Rhopoint IQ FLEX 20-S.
Ask our experts
