Molded Plastic Parts
HunterLab has instrument and sample handling devices to meet almost any customer needs. One such need that we are able to meet is the measurement of molded plastic parts, such as the one pictured above. These plastic parts are actually covers for a stud finder tool. The nature of these parts presents a few difficulties for color measurement.
One of the biggest challenges is that the parts have a curvature to them that make measurements on our bench top instrument difficult. These parts also have a slight shine and texture that needs to be taken into account when measuring. To include the shine component of the plastic part it needs to be measured with a sphere instrument. The measurement on a sphere instrument ensures that the sample is measured in Reflectance Specular Included mode which will measure the appearance of the part.
To accurately measure the sample with the curvature it has, a small area of view should be used. The small area of measurement provides the flattest area possible on the plastic part for the measurement. Since the plastic is slightly non-uniform and a curved area is being measured it is best to average multiple readings to achieve a repeatable measurement method.
The MiniScan EZ sphere instrument with small area view is the best instrument for the measurements on the plastic part. The sphere allows for consideration of the shine and the small area of view helps to measure as flat of an area as possible. Averaging multiple readings on the MiniScan EZ with small area of view provides a very repeatable measurement method for plastic parts such as this.
