Influence of topographical features on the surface appearance measurement of injection moulded components

Abstract Adding textures to surfaces is known to improve the external appearance of injection moulded components. However, when high surface quality is required, normally a paint coating is applied on top of the moulded textured surface. In this work, an alternative to painting for obtaining high quality surfaces is proposed, following an environmental-friendly process and having low production cost. Three different surface textures obtained by injection moulding have been characterized and compared with a painted one. Alternative topographical parameters such as the absolute functional height (AFH), the functional height distribution (FHD), texture slope (TS) or texture aperture angle (TAA) besides to the traditional roughness parameters such as the arithmetical mean height (Sa) and the root mean square height (Sq) have been utilized to characterize the random surface textures. The relationships between these parameters and the surface quality appearance represented by gloss and reflectivity contrast have been established using a new total appearance measurement (TAM) apparatus. It was found that by applying secondary operation on the textured mould cavity, such as adding micro roughness features or coatings, equal apparent quality to the ones obtained by painting can be reached.