SpectraLight gives car door handles the thumbs-up

SpectraLight gives car door handles the thumbs-up

Keywords Automotive,GretagMacbeth, Lighting

Car door handle manufacturer ITW Fastex has pressed a GretagMacbeth SpectraLight colour matching booth into service to enable the Ford Motor Company to provide a touch of style in two of its popular models of car. The Leicestershire based company supplies plastic door handles for Ford's Puma and Mondeo ranges, whose distinctive designs feature external door handles which match the body colours of the cars. This means that the handles have to be painted in a total of 19 different colours.

The SpectraLight booth provides a controlled lighting environment in which batches of the painted handles can be visually compared with flat panel master samples supplied by Ford. This enables ITW Fastex to identify any colour mis-match quickly and conveniently, and to inform the sub-contractor which carries out the painting process as soon possible so that the mixture of its paints can be corrected accordingly.

The booth can be configured to illuminate samples under test in a range of light settings designed to simulate a variety of natural and artificial lighting conditions. For the purposes of maintaining the consistent colour quality of its car door handles, ITW Fastex uses a standard natural daylight setting which allows the full range of colours to be matched with equal reliability.