Color Measurements in Electroplating Industry: Implications for Product Quality Control

Electroplating industry constantly requires accurate color references as part of quality control decision on manufactured goods and accessories. Especially in the metal finishing sector color inconsistency due to variable instrumental settings and product geometry would cause communication problems between producer and customer. In this respect we focused on electroplated color evaluation operated by colorimeters generally used in fashion manufacturing, and compared the results with a laboratory spectrophotometer. Implications of surface finish, texture, and instrumental settings on color tolerance of cataphoretic coatings were discussed. Based on the recommendations of the Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE) we show a correlation between perceptual color differences and sampled areas. Increased surface roughness levels off color tolerance among different colorimeter’s apertures, though deviations remain high, ΔE > 2. Color reproducibility from three local fashion companies is presented for electroplated metal finished samples. We show that there are significant differences between industrial and laboratory measurement, near the limits of naked eye perceptibility of two different colors 1 < ΔE < 3.