You may be asking yourself, why would I need a Voglesong COLORef in my verified color solution? My color measurement instrument comes with a calibration plaque. Yes, and that calibration plaque is very important to keep the instrument in a known state traceable to a standards group like ISO or ANSI.
How about knowing how well your instruments measure compared to each other? Once you have two or more instruments in a verified color solution, inter-instrument agreement becomes quite important when working with critical color customers. Or, you might want to track the stability of a single instrument over time. The only way to accomplish this is by measuring an independent third party color reference material with a regular frequency.
The Process
1. Calibrate your instrument.
2. Measure the COLORef and collect the spectral reflectance curves for each color swatch using ProofPass.com
3. Track the instruments stability over time.
4. Compare the measurement values of a single COLORef measured with multiple instruments.
The Questions
1. Do I really need to send the instrument back for re-certification each year?
If the instrument is still measuring the COLORef within an acceptable tolerance and you don’t have a customer requiring annual certification then no. You would be able to delay that expense until the device is no longer measuring consistently within an acceptable tolerance range.
2. What if my instruments don’t agree within an acceptable tolerance.
There are mathematical methods to normalize spectral reflectance curves form multiple instruments. This option is of course facilitated with software. The other option is to replace offending instruments and stick to one manufacturer and model to minimize the problem.
We seee the Voglesong COLORRef as an integral part of any serious verified color solution. You can buy yours now or contact us to further discuss your current and future color strategy.