With the MICRO-COLOR research project, Merseburg-based Exipnos GmbH aims to penetrate previously unexplored areas of plastic coloring.
Merseburg, May 23, 2016. Precisely coloring plastics, for example for car interiors, has so far been primarily a process of trial and error. Harmonizing the colors of hundreds of individual parts made from a wide variety of plastic materials with differing surface textures from dozens of manufacturers often takes months during product development.
Exipnos GmbH has created a way to drastically simplify this process with its DCIM direct compounding technology. Building on this, the Merseburg-based company now aims to break into entirely new territory. To this end, the research project “MICRO-COLOR,” funded by the state of Saxony-Anhalt and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), was launched in March 2016.
“Our most important goal is to develop micro-color granules specifically tailored for processing with DCIM, allowing for even more precise and simpler color settings than before,” explains company head Peter Putsch. At the same time, the existing dosing system is to be significantly expanded and improved. “Our vision is to largely automate coloring with DCIM,” reveals the plastics expert. According to his plans, manufacturers will in the future be able to “precisely target selected points in the color space for a given material, instead of laboriously approximating them through trial and error.”