Photometric and colorimetric technologies

Quality evaluation in industrial fields by using highly accurate photometers and colorimeters

“Visualizing” light and colors and promoting digital quality control between supply chains

Technologies for quantifying light emitted from displays, organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), LEDs, and other illuminants and the colors of industrial products, such as automobiles, ICTs, chemical products, and printed matter, are important technologies underlying the quality control of products. Konica Minolta provides photometric and colorimetric technologies that can ensure the quality required by customers in various industries with high accuracy and stability. These technologies can digitalize trace light quantities and subtle hues that human beings cannot discriminate only with their eyes and experience, by means of measuring systems that can minimize the disturbance factors of the measuring environment and ensure excellent usability. These technologies deliver quality control with unified standards at any point of globalizing supply chains and contribute to the digital transformation (DX) of quality control.

Technology Overview

Konica Minolta’s photometers and colorimeters are spectroscopic type products, which decompose light by wavelength with a diffraction grating etc., to ensure measurement with high sensitivity and accuracy.

A photometer measures light incident directly from the light source. In a display evaluation, an evaluation in the state of displaying black is important, and high sensitivity is required. For spectrophotometers in particular, we have realized an optical system featuring a high wavelength resolution and reduced aberration by developing a unique high-sensitivity spectroscopic unit and optimizing the width and aperture angle of the spectral slit.

A colorimeter measures colors by utilizing light radiated to and reflected from an object. A more sophisticated wavelength calibration technology for spectrometers and the reduced noise of electronic circuits have achieved high accuracy and reliability (which are required for supply chain data control), and the efficiency of performance evaluations has been significantly improved by a newly developed technology capable of simultaneously measuring colors and gloss values.