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Introduction
Throughout the history of mass telecommunications, a need has existed for a
reliable method of distinguishing and identifying separate component wires in a
cable. As the industry, progresses to fiber optic ribbon technology, the need still
exists. Historically, the "Munsell" has filled the need adequately in the
United States. In Europe, other standards exist which are similar in principal to the
"Munsell" Standard. While these standards establish baselines for colors tobe
used in telecommunication cabling structures, they use extremely fallible and
subjective measurement tools; the human eye and human perception of color.
Although little literature has been generated on this phenomena, everyone has
experienced the situation where they may call a color,"red" while another.will call
it "mauve" or "scarlet". Much of our perception of color depends on the light with
which it is viewed, the angle of viewing to the colored surface, the "gloss" of the
surface, the background of the colored surface, the medium which.we are viewing
the color through (air, water, cabling matrix materials, etc.), and even the mood
we are in at the time of viewing. Obviously, the need exists for an objective color
measurement method. : Having devised such a method, analysis of color
contribution of various fiberoptic components in a fiber optic ribbon or cable is
possible. In this paper, a colorimeter is used to measure the contribution of various
components of a fiber optic coating system towards color change of the composite
coating matrix. This method is a modification of a previously presented method.
The theory behind this method is that color can be conceived of as a.three
dimensional coordinate system with three axes. The three axes are labeled as
follows: red-green, yellow-blue, and lightness. Any color which exists can be
defined as a specific point on this coordinate axes. Unfortunately, "color space",
as it is termed, is slightly warped. Various mathematical methods for compensating
for this warp have been devised and are fairly well known in the color industry.
One such mathematical manipulétion is , the method Used in this paper.
This system allows one to calculate absolute color coordinates and the vector
deviation from a standard which one chooses to use for comparison. will
be used to isolate the contribution of various optical fiber coating components
before and after accelerated aging at various conditions. An important factor which
contributes to a color measurement is the opaqueness of the color. This means
that color measurements of thin ink layers (from 5-25 microns) will be dependent
on the actual thicknesses used. Comparisons must be made at identical (or close
to identical) ink thicknesses. Any conclusions drawn from this and any similar
publications must be constrained to those ink thicknesses.
