Product Index by Industry

About Color and Appearance

The automotive industry is one of the industries in which color meters are commonly used. Their application is continually expanding.
For exterior parts, a wider variety of coating colors and the design of integrated bumpers spur the need for color measurement. As the ratio of metallic and pearl coatings increases, it is no longer possible to judge colors by the human eye or to manage colors with conventional color meters. Moreover, there is a continuing trend toward a design that integrates bumpers with the body, resulting in complicated shapes of curved surfaces and edges. It is impossible to manage these products without using a definite evaluation angle and method. The CM-512m3, a multi-angle spectrophotometer which can measure highlight and shade colors simultaneously, is widely used by many companies.

For interior parts, materials with deeper grained surfaces using laser engraving have more complicated color characteristics. At the same time, there are growing demands for the use of color meters for strict color comparison between individual interior parts to improve the quality of total color coordination. Konica Minolta offers two models suitable for such quality improvement: the CM-2500c (45/0 geometry model) for color comparison between parts with different grains, and the CM-2600d (integrating sphere model) for color management of mass-produced components.

About Light and Display

In addition to the color management of interior/exterior parts, measurements are applied to various items. One of them is 2D measurement of car instrument panels (combination meters). The CA-2000 Color Analyzer is widely used to quickly detect the luminance mura and color mura of many LEDs used in an instrument panel.

About 3D Digitizing

For 3D measurement, the automotive industry is an industry where non-contact 3D digitizers are most widely used. Measurement targets include stamped or plastic-molded interior/exterior parts; cast or forged parts such as engines, suspension systems and supply/exhaust systems; and even other parts including seats, tires, and retrofit parts. The "VIVID 9i" Non-contact 3D Digitizer is the most popular model in the fields of design, shape analysis and dimension inspection. Another successful application of the instrument observed recently is to reduce the time for mold preparation by using its high measurement accuracy. "VIVID 9i" is also widely used in the aviation and ship industries.