Color deviation acceptable range
Hello,
We have a product: electrolyte powder. The powder needs to be added to water to create the beverage.
The electrolyte powder contains (natural) colourings, but there is variation in terms of color between batches. I'm working on setting up a method to decide how much the color of the beverage can deviate in order to still be acceptable.
We don't have a colorimeter or spectrophotometer so we cannot use those devices.
Does someone has ideas of how to test this/ have a good test method in mind?
My idea was using color cards and keeping this color cards next to the sample and see if it's still acceptable or not. We do of course need to decide how much lighter / darker the sample can be in order for production to be released.
Any ideas are welcome!
We use colour cards for our product
they are numbered 1-12, then you can dictate your acceptable range by number-say 5-8 or whatever you decide
you may luck out and be able to find very close matches at the paint store---then the chips can be held up behind the glass beaker
just understand the colour varies from person to person so there is some variance built in already
Hi, welcome to the forum. It's a good idea to use color cards: for one our customers, we've created a range of colors using pantone: say, for mango kefir - yellow shades from light to a bit darker, for strawberry kefir - pink ones. The decision was made basing on comparison of several batches. Has been working perfectly for all these years.
Thank you both for the answers!
Other then the paint store, is there anywhere else I could get colour cards? In case the paint store doesn't have the right color ranges
I do color by retained sample comparison. Also in my qa logs I have high res photos of a standard.
quick search of pantone chip cards shows lots of ordering options :)
Didn't experience this with drink powder but a baked product. We made color variation samples and had a professional photographer come in and snap some pictures that we used to make internal color cards to use. Just thought I'd throw that out there as an option.