YOUR BIGGEST PROBLEM IN COLOR DEVELOPMENT COMES FROM YOURSELF – PART B
Even the best dyers in the world, with the latest most up to date dyes and equipment and perfect process control are not able to color match some of the color requests sent to them. Doing your homework on your color specification will allow your dyers to be superfast, accurate and even self-approve production for you.
We wrote about this issue in the previous natific news (“Your biggest problem in color development comes from yourself – Part A”). Let’s look at the second biggest cause, how poor sourcing can affect your color development.
Doing your homework on your global production dyers
There are many things that can go wrong in production dyeing. Below is a list of the most common issues that occur. It can seem a scary long list. It is good to know that for dyers who are certified within the Color Accreditation Program (CAP) these issues are rare and quickly resolved.
Typical issues observed at dyers that may lead to rejected lab dips
- Dyestuff selection and dyestuffs available have not been optimized by the lab
- Non-optimal dyestuff selection to meet fastness requirement
- Not enough attention paid to metamerism in recipe dyestuff selection
- Lab does not pay enough attention to tolerances in all lights
- The dye house follows the first dye-lot in production and do not adjust the recipe to center over the digital color standard
- Resistance to use more than 3 dyes in a recipe
- Poor lab reproducibility
- Poor knowledge for manual L a b corrections
- Reduction Clear process is not followed precisely
- Lab to bulk scale-up has not been optimized
- Not assessing levelness digitally
- Little training in UV calibration or wrong UV filter calibration
- No system in dye-selection
- Poor calibration data for recipe prediction
- Wrong setting at the spectrophotometer
- No solid routine to use for example Datacolor or X-Rite software to adjust colors, especially the use of Smart Match from Datacolor, and/or do not use the software possibilities fully
- Not studying the color manual properly, do not understand English
Feel free to use the list to get a better understanding of your dyers and potential color issues. The natific team is happy to help you investigate in and resolve any color production issues.
Sincerely,
your natific team