Investigating the Precision and Trueness of Spectrophotometers Using BCRA Ceramic Standard Tiles

In the present investigation four spectrophotometers from different models of the X-Rite company were compared in terms of precision and truness using BCRA standard tiles. We investigated the effect of manufacturer’s re-calibration procedure on the reduction of error for spectrophotometers in which only two of them were calibrated. The repeatability results of this research show that the precision of all spectrophotometers is acceptable and there is no significant difference between calibrated and non-calibrated devices. Moreover, the average of color difference results for a series of fourteen BCRA tiles show that only the CE7000 A as a non-calibrated spectrophotometer needs the manufacturer’s re-calibration procedure whereas the SP62 spectrophotometer which was not calibrated, shows no significant error in comparison to both other calibrated devices. Additionally for achromatic tiles, the new calibrated Ci64 device demonstrates a larger error than both SP62 and SP64 devices. Meanwhile, the average of color difference values per device for BCRA tiles are larger than acceptable values. Therefore, it seems that the acceptable value for trueness of spectrophotometers is an unreasonable expectation and needs to be revised.