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Rhopoint Instruments is a British manufacturer of precision instruments for measuring surface appearance quality, headquartered in St Leonards on Sea, East Sussex. For four decades, the company has developed instruments that allow manufacturers to measure, quantify and control the visible quality of surfaces, from the first generation of handheld glossmeters to today’s perception-based optical systems and automated inline sensors.
All Rhopoint Instruments products are designed and manufactured at our headquarters in St Leonards on Sea, East Sussex, our purpose-built home since 2013. The facility brings R&D, manufacturing and calibration together under one roof.
Rhopoint Instruments holds certification to ISO 9001:2015 for quality management and, since November 2022, holds UKAS accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025 for gloss calibration, the internationally recognised standard for the competence of calibration laboratories. These accreditations provide customers with independent, traceable assurance covering both the quality of our manufactured instruments and the calibration services that support them.
To provide dedicated regional support, operating companies have been established in North America and mainland Europe, complemented by a global network of authorised distributors and calibration partners, many of whom have been part of the Rhopoint network for over a decade.
Rhopoint Americas Inc. was established in 2018 in Troy, Michigan. Located within the North American automotive and coatings heartland, Rhopoint Americas carries comprehensive local stock of our full instrument range and provides direct sales, calibration and technical support to customers throughout North, Central and South America.
Rhopoint Instruments GmbH was established in 2022 in Weyarn, Germany. The German operation provides direct sales and technical support to customers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the wider mainland European market.
Together, these regional operations and our international distribution network ensure that our instruments, calibration services and technical expertise are accessible wherever appearance quality is critical.
Rhopoint Instruments was founded as a specialist manufacturer of glossmeters for the paint, coatings and industrial finishing sectors. Instruments were produced for 20°, 60° and 85° measurement geometries in compliance with international standards, providing the reliable and repeatable gloss data that quality control in manufacturing demands. These instruments established the company’s reputation and formed the foundation upon which the wider product range was built.
The Rhopoint MFFT instrument was introduced to address a fundamental parameter in waterborne coating formulation: the lowest temperature at which a latex, emulsion or adhesive will uniformly coalesce to form a continuous film. Providing accurate, repeatable measurement across a calibrated temperature gradient, the instrument became the standard choice for coatings R&D and quality control laboratories at leading global manufacturers. It remains an active and widely specified instrument within the Rhopoint portfolio.
In 2006, Rhopoint acquired the Hanatek range of packaging test instruments, extending the company’s capabilities into the flexible packaging sector. Hanatek instruments measure coefficient of friction, seal strength and film shrinkage, providing the data manufacturers need to qualify materials, optimise packaging line speeds and maintain consistent product quality. The Hanatek range remains in active production as a distinct product line within the Rhopoint portfolio.
The Rhopoint IQ brought gloss, haze and DOI measurement together into a single compact, handheld instrument for the first time, allowing operators to characterise multiple correlated appearance parameters in a single reading at the point of production or in the field. The instrument quantifies surface quality problems that are invisible to a standard glossmeter, including effects such as orange peel on high-gloss finishes, and is capable of measuring metallic coatings through its compensation for the adjacent haze measurement angle. IQ was adopted widely across automotive refinishing, industrial coatings and consumer product manufacturing, and set the template for Rhopoint’s subsequent multi-parameter instrument designs.
The Optimap PSD was launched in 2013 as the first portable instrument capable of mapping and measuring surface texture over a wide area in a single operation, replacing subjective visual assessment with objective, repeatable data. Using phase-measurement deflectometry, it produces a detailed three-dimensional topographic map quantifying orange peel, long- and short-wave waviness, DOI and localised defects including inclusions, blistering, sagging, overspray and water stains, across surfaces from semi-matt finishes to polished mirrors, including small and curved parts. The current Optimap3 PSD maps a 65 x 54 mm area in under ten seconds, with a lateral resolution of under 37 µm, and operates non-contact, making it suitable for use on freshly applied wet coatings.
The Rhopoint TAMS was developed in collaboration with Volkswagen AG and Audi AG over four years and launched at the European Coatings Show in 2017 as the first instrument to quantify the total perceived appearance of a painted surface. Using phase-measurement deflectometry alongside machine vision, TAMS characterises surface contrast, image sharpness, waviness and dominant structure size, reporting results through the perceptually meaningful Quality index (the overall appearance of a surface) and the Harmony coefficient (the visual consistency between adjacent panels). The current generation, TAMS 3, extends the original capability with new perception-based metrics, ISO 16610-compliant high-resolution 3D altitude maps applicable from raw materials and e-coat through to clearcoat, and characterisation of common surface defects, complemented by RoboTAMS, a robot-mounted configuration enabling automated measurement at defined positions directly on the production line.
The Rhopoint ID is the world’s first imaging transmission appearance meter, developed in collaboration with the Materials Department at ETH Zurich and using the Illumination Diffusion (ID) metric, a method established in published peer-reviewed research to quantify how a transparent material affects the appearance of objects viewed through it. In a single measurement, the instrument reports three parameters: ID-Haze (the reduction of contrast for objects viewed through the material), ID-Sharpness (the loss of perceived detail), and the overall ID value — each measured both in contact and at a defined airgap distance to replicate real-world viewing conditions. Unlike a conventional ASTM D1003 haze meter, the Rhopoint ID can measure small samples down to 6 mm, curved surfaces, and captures the variation of transparency with airgap distance, making it suitable for applications across packaging, plastics, coatings, glass and printing.
The Rhopoint Aesthetix is a modular, camera-based instrument using high-resolution imaging and controlled multi-angle illumination to characterise surface appearance across paints, plastics, metals and textured coatings, in laboratory, portable and inline configurations. In a single measurement operation it captures gloss, contrast gloss, haze, waviness, DOI, texture, roughness, colour, sparkle, graininess and fine surface defects including scratches, swirls and holograms. Aesthetix is supported by Appearance Elements, Rhopoint’s modular software platform that unifies data from Aesthetix and the TAMS instrument family, enabling users to visualise, correlate and communicate appearance standards across R&D and manufacturing teams.
The Rhopoint ID Inline extends the perception-based measurement principles of the ID into a non-contact inline configuration for plastic film and sheet production lines. The camera-based system continuously quantifies transparency appearance parameters across a moving web in real time, with results that are highly correlated to human perception, without contact or interruption to the production process. It enables manufacturers to detect and respond to appearance changes immediately, replacing periodic offline sampling with continuous process monitoring.
AIDO, launched in 2026, is the first inline sensor to simultaneously measure gloss, reflectance haze, DOI and RSPEC on a moving coated surface, operating non-contact at a fixed 60 mm stand-off directly above the production line. The four parameters work together to provide a complete picture of coating appearance quality: 60° gloss provides the standard reference for overall reflectance (fully compliant with ASTM D523 and ISO 2813), reflectance haze quantifies light scattering around the specular peak, DOI describes the sharpness of reflected images, and RSPEC is a narrow-angle peak specular metric sensitive to fine surface texture, distinguishing surfaces that share the same gloss level but differ in the perceived smoothness and depth of finish. AIDO produces measurement data directly comparable with handheld glossmeter readings from existing quality systems, bringing complete perception-aligned appearance measurement to the production line for the first time.
