2.5D Printing

1Defining the Field of 2.5D Printing

1.1 What is Texture?

What is the relationship between textures we see in the real world and as a reproduction? How convincing are these? As more images are digitally reproduced and printed, standardised methods may result in a uniform ubiquity, whereby prints, posters, photos and reproductions of paintings are all printed in the same way, and likewise objects that are fabricated using the same materials, using the same layer upon layer fabrication methods. On the one hand, we can say that digital technologies have assisted in printing things faster, cheaper, bigger, bolder; on the other hand, we could suggest these things fall short of expected levels of quality. We could suggest that quantity may have been achieved at the cost of quality or ubiquity at the cost of diversity. In our manufacturing world, as more and more things are designed and created digitally, how do we bridge the gap between images we see on screen and how it is physically reproduced?

Texture can be described as the microstructural details that can be perceptually distinguished from one surface property to another. One could consider texture as multisensory; we only need to look at a surface to gain a quick understanding of its textural properties, which may then be reinforced by other senses (smell, taste and touch) (Klatzky and Lederman, 2011). Texture could be broadly categorised according to whether it is tactile or visual, it can be described by its appearance, as a noun ...