ON-LINE COLOUR MEASUREMENT USING LASER-BASED ABRIDGED SPECTROPHOTOMETRY

Carefully constructed colour relationships and subtle colour choice are central to design inspiration. When the designer's ideas are transferred to production, loss of the original colour inspiration is potentially very damaging to the ultimate success of the design. Reliable on-line colour measurement may prove to be an important part of the technology needed to faithfully reproduce original design ideas. A demonstration laser photometer, intended to measure colorant concentrations during production, has been constructed at UMIST. It has proved capable of a level of measurement sensitivity and reflectance measurement accuracy comparable to a reference bench spectrophotometer at the three wavelengths used. The intent is to provide an instrument technology with which the output of a coloration system can be monitored and potentially controlled, on-line. The availability of abundant monochromatic light from lasers, and flbre-optic delivery, makes cheap multi-head measuring systems feasible. The predicted re...