Preliminary Study on Surface Texture to Manipulate Perceived Softness of 3D Printed Objects

Abstract

Previous studies have attempted to manipulate the elastic properties of products from elements such as different materials and internal structures. In this paper, we investigate whether we can manipulate the softness perceived by the surface texture when using the FDM-3D printer. We investigated the perceived softness of the surface texture provided by Tymms et al., in which cones of 1 mm in height are arranged, by a subject experiment. From the experimental results, it was found that the hardness perceived by increasing the arrangement interval of the cones decreased and the subjects perceived softer the objects with the surface texture.