Measuring the zinc strip colour in production

The company H.D.Lenzen specialises in the field of surface finishing for strip materials, while occupying a worldwide leading position in this market. The steel and aluminium 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 colouring. Reliable testing of this colouring is necessary in order to ensure consistent product quality.

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