Measuring the zinc strip color in production

The company H.D.Lenzen specializes in the field of surface finishing for strip materials, while occupying a worldwide leading position in this market. The steel and aluminum strips are coated during surface finishing with zinc. Zinc is deposited onto the cleaned strip from an electrolyte solution by applying a high electrical current. The strip material not only receives corrosion and wear protection but also defined coloring. Reliable testing of this coloring is necessary in order to ensure consistent product quality.

In order to fulfill the high requirements for precision and speed, the innovative colorCONTROL ACS7000 color measuring system from Micro-Epsilon is used, which recognizes color shades to an accuracy of ∆E < 0.1. Manual and visual inspections are not possible in this area as the trained human eye only recognizes color distances up to max. ∆E 0.5.