Extinction of Colorboxes

With the development of the painting and technology market, we have more and more data in electronic form. It turns out that not all customers see this as an advantage, so it's good to have a choice. There is still a huge audience that values traditional solutions, wants to physically touch the colour chip and check the proposed shade. It should also be mentioned that such a ‘traditional’ type of colour box is much less expensive compared to a spectrophotometer and its software.

Generally, there are two types of colour boxes on the car paint market, which determine the arrangement of colours: according to the vehicle brand and the chromatic system (i.e. arrangement according to colours, e.g. ColorTool by Profix). Of course, colour documentation can also be divided according to the production method: printing (traditional printing technology, offering limited accuracy of paint colour reproduction), spraying (the most expensive method, but ensuring the highest colour conformity and realistic reproduction of the paint application effect) and coating (combines the advantages of the above two - relatively low cost, while maintaining the original paintwork).

Coating is the most popular form of production, which involves applying colour to paper using a roller. This technology is characterised by a very good ratio of production costs to the quality of the coating obtained. Templates produced in this way also achieve the most stable colour throughout the entire production process.

Returning to the arrangement of the colour chips, the brand system undoubtedly has many advantages, the greatest of which is its transparency and ease of use by the untrained user. For the more advanced user, however, a better solution is documentation in a chromatic arrangement, which, upon closer inspection, proves to be a very versatile solution. The customer has very easy access to the selected colour group and therefore finding the right colour takes only a few seconds. This is particularly important when we do not know the colour code or the car is repainted. In such cases, we are not interested in the manufacturer or OEM code, the colour is matched by finding the closest colour among the existing chips.

The arrangement of the data sheets in the cabinet is very helpful in the colour search process, as all colour groups are visible at a glance at the arranged sets. An additional, very interesting aspect of this solution is the fact that when searching for a colour using the recipe program, the program suggests a data sheet for a standard or variant, however, when we are unable to match the dedicated index card, we can always use the index cards to the right or left of the proposed one, i.e. in fact the entire colour box is one big string of variants. The advantage of this solution is also the fact that one colour code can be assigned to several different codes and manufacturers, because the same colour can be found on the vehicles of several different manufacturers.

A natural development of the use of the potential of the chromatic system (e.g. ColorTool by Profix) is therefore the fact that it is possible (using the formulation program) to search for formulations from the OEM code and/or manufacturer side (with a prompt regarding the dedicated card) or to select the card itself that matches the car and go to the formulation from the card side, without thinking about the colour code. Of course, despite the many advantages of colour documentation, we are unable to stop technological progress. This means only one thing: in the future, customers all over the world will only use spectrophotometers connected to the cloud via a phone or tablet to match car colours.