Web-based service for pigments

A new colorimetric system from LANXESS has enabled a unique service to be created for the leather industry, including a look at fashion colours for the next two seasons. The system has enabled the creation of 27 fashion colours for the 2006 summer season. Using formulations developed in this way, customers can plan their colour range and purchase the relevant pigments early on. The Leather Business Unit of LANXESS Deutschland GmbH is using a web-based colorimetrics and colour formulation system to integrate all their expertise in colour standardisation and formulation relating to leather finishing pigments. As well as intensive technical support in developing optimal colour formulations, the Leather BU also offer customers a regularly updated range of standard compositions for fashion colours. Using the X-Rite Color Master Web Edition, a hardware and software package from X-Rite GmbH, Cologne, LANXESS already have suitable technological means at their disposal at four Intranet-linked sites in Leverkusen (Germany), Wuxi (China), Zárate (Argentina), and São Leopoldo (Brazil). Stefan Wildbrett, leather technologist at LANXESS in Leverkusen, explains the benefits, saying: 'We no longer need to send data storage media or colour samples half way around the world by mail or courier to be certain we have found the correct colour with our formulation. The new colour measuring system calculates this formulation precisely and error-free in seconds.' At the click of a mouse, the system computes every theoretically conceivable pigment combination and displays those that most accurately reproduce the colour of the customer's sample. Calculations like these can be modified by other factors, such as the maximum number of colouring substances in the formulation or the minimum proportion of a component. Requirements as to the opacity of the finishing can also be taken into account. 'The system is easy to use, free, very robust and fast, which means we can process customer enquiries in a very short time', explains Wildbrett. 'Such a system allows a colour to be adjusted free of metamerism', he continues. This is especially important in leather production if tannery customers, for instance from the automotive industry, give exact specifications as to the colour or colour effect of samples under varying lighting. There are 18 different illuminants stored in the new colorimetric system, for which appropriate colour values can be calculated and used as the basis for metamerism-optimised formulations.