In 1993, Taiji Sato, the founder of our company, presented a paper at the Color Engineering Conference, a joint conference organized by four Japanese optical societies (the Color Science Association of Japan, the Illuminating Engineering Institute of Japan, the Society of Photography and Imaging of Japan, and the Japan Society of Applied Physics). The title was “Conditions for Light Sources Used in Color Evaluation.” This paper summarizes what lighting should be like in order to accurately evaluate and manage colors.
The publication of this paper ended up causing quite a stir in the industry.
Until then, high color-rendering fluorescent lamps were the mainstream light source for visual inspections in color management. By rejecting that and establishing a new standard, we, in a sense, ended up making major lighting manufacturers our adversaries.
People in the paint industry, however, responded favorably. At that time, paint manufactures conducted visual inspections under high color-rendering fluorescent lamps. However, they were troubled because it was difficult to get the colors to match. The paper we published concluded that even with high color-rendering fluorescent lamps, it is not possible to view colors accurately. The paint manufacturers were deeply convinced by this conclusion and agreed with us.
Since then, Japanese paint manufacturers have increasingly adopted artificial solar lamps, and now they have become indispensable as a “standard light source for accurate color management.”
Since paint is an industrial product, there are slight deviations in color. Artificial solar lighting is used to determine whether that color deviation is within company standards.
It is important to evaluate not only the color of the paint in the can, but also the color of the paint that has been applied. Painting conditions differ for each of the customers of paint manufacturers, as they are from various industries and business fields. Even within architecture, items such as exteriors, interiors, buildings, wooden houses, bridges, and guardrails all have different substrates. Therefore, paint manufacturers also properly manage what happens to the color of the paint after application.
In addition, the surface condition also differs depending on the purpose of the paint. There is no end to the list of what can cause these differences, such as whether the paint is highly reflective or non-reflective, the gloss of the surface, surface roughness (texture), coating, and so on. Recently, the performance of measuring instruments has improved significantly, but it is extremely difficult to manage numerical values while taking surface conditions into account, so both measuring instruments and visual inspection are used together.
For this reason, compared to other customers, those in the paint industry use a particularly high number of artificial solar lighting units. The types used are either XC-100A or XC-100AF for the 100W series, or XC-500A or XC-500AF for the 500W series.
The 500W series is used when the object to be inspected is large, while the 100W series is used for smaller objects, such as test panels that have a temporary coating.
In recent years, as paint manufacturers in Japan, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and other parts of the world strive to establish uniform standards across their global sites, artificial solar lighting has been actively used as the standard light source for viewing colors.
For these reasons, many paint manufacturers have adopted XELIOS artificial solar lighting for these sort of applications and use it as a standard light source.
If you are looking for a standard light source with the same conditions as natural sunlight, please feel free to contact us.
・Artificial Solar Lighting XELIOS-500W Series
・Artificial Solar Lighting XELIOS-100W Series
