Page 17 - CAD News Spring 2021

The Technical Content portion of our Spring addition of CADNEWS® includes a well-
rounded view into color tolerancing. Have you recently considered the way you or your

customers are managing specifications? If so, the summary below It’s Past Time to
Standardize Color Tolerances for Plastics, provides technical insight. Click on the link to
read the complete article.

It’s Past Time to Standardize Color Tolerances for Plastics

Plastics lags alarmingly behind when it comes to color tolerancing, because the
industry continues to rely on outdated color space calculations and tolerancing
schemes that do not agree with visual
assessment, such as CIE 1976 DE* (spherical Shoot for the green....
tolerancing). This practice impacts color
development and matching capabilities, and win deals with FORTUNE, we are stocked,
leading to production inefficiencies and ready to ship and offer fast turnaround.
other challenges.
Solvent Dyes  Anti-
To stay relevant and address these color Oxidants  Stearates 
shortcomings, the plastics industry should
consider standardizing the use of the CMC Waxes  UV Absorbers
or CIE2000 DE* formulas, which have been
shown to better represent color differences
as the human eye perceives them. In fact,
the leaders in color management technology
recommend using CIE2000 DE* as the
industry gold standard.

Making this transition would be challenging
and would require adoption across plastics
manufacturers’ standards, but it would
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to older color space calculations for Delta E,
while also increasing efficiencies, saving time and reducing waste.

The problem with CIE DE* is that you cannot rely on your numerical tolerancing.
And isn’t that the primary purpose of having tolerancing in the first place? These
formulas are intended to help us move away from subjective visual color
assessments.

Tolerancing schemes like CIE DE* only work effectively if you can shrink the
tolerance region — the sphere — down to a size where it eliminates any visually
unacceptable results. This is inefficient and wasteful, as it also eliminates batches
outside of the numerical value that are visually acceptable.

2021 Spring Edition 17