On the measure of the aesthetic quality of 3D printed plastic parts

3D printing is one of the most interactive recent manufacturing technologies at both design and manufacturing levels. To date, the interest and involvement that people have shown towards the possibility to model and produce parts by themselves have boosted the proliferation of 3D printers. Nevertheless, an uncorrected design or a design that does not fit the machine capabilities could lead to parts with poor aesthetic features that reduce the user-perceived quality and the expectation of the easy user-usability of the technology. The purpose of this paper is to validate the robustness of the aesthetic quality index (AQI) that is used for the evaluation of the user-perceived quality of 3D printed parts. A specific reference part that was designed for 3D printing defects to have a high probability of occurrence is considered to be representative and greatly significant for the aesthetic quality of 3D printed parts. In this work a replica of the reference part is printed with three different 3D printers and evaluated by nine users. An additional replica is also produced for consistency assessment, and the quality evaluation test was repeated twice in 1 month. The AQI indicator results to be consistent and robust over the users and time. The measure of the AQI and the reference part seem user-friendly tools and may provide a useful design-aid for an immediate understanding of the feasibility of a specific design feature in a framework of user interactivity.