Cabinet Door Color Replication via Digital Scanning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Maintaining uniform color standards for cabinet doors across different manufacturing facilities is challenging due to variations in wood substrates and stain materials, making it difficult to ensure manufactured doors match the color samples provided to consumers.
Innovation Solution
Standard samples of nominal, extreme light, and extreme dark doors are scanned and processed into a computer program, with the scanned images printed and attached to door blanks, serving as fixed reference standards that can be uniformly applied across multiple manufacturing locations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If actual manufactured doors are used as color samples, then the samples reflect real production variations, but the color standards become unstable and difficult to maintain across different facilities
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a digital copy of the reference color standard and stores it in a database. This digital copy can be replicated exactly at multiple manufacturing facilities without the variations inherent in physical samples. The system scans the reference door, processes the image, and stores it as a master reference that can be reproduced consistently.
Solution Approach 2:
The system transforms the physical color standard into a digital parameter representation (image data). By converting the physical door sample into digital image parameters and storing them in a database, the system eliminates the variability of physical materials while maintaining the color standard's integrity across different locations and time.
2Ease of operation
If physical sample doors are maintained at the manufacturing facility, then color comparison is straightforward, but the samples are affected by wood substrate and stain material variations over time
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of maintaining physical sample doors that deteriorate or vary over time, the system creates a digital copy of the reference color. This digital copy remains stable and unchanged, eliminating the problem of physical sample degradation while preserving the ability to compare colors.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical/physical sample comparison system with a digital image processing system. The physical door samples are replaced by digital images stored in a database, which can be accessed and compared without the limitations of physical materials.
3Productivity
If multiple manufacturing facilities are used, then production capacity increases, but maintaining uniform color standards becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The digital reference standard serves multiple facilities simultaneously. The same master reference image stored in the database can be accessed by any number of manufacturing locations, enabling uniform color standards across all facilities without requiring separate physical samples at each location.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a master digital copy of the color standard that can be replicated at any number of facilities. This digital copying approach allows multiple manufacturing locations to maintain identical color standards without the variations inherent in distributing physical samples.
Data Source
AI summary
Cabinet doors are compared to color samples as a quality control check on the colors of the manufacture doors. The color samples are obtained by selecting doors which have acceptable color, and capturing those images into a computer readable format. These captured images may then be printed, stored, transmitted, etc.