Influence of 3d Printing Process Parameters on the Radiation Characteristics of Dense Dielectric Lens Antennas

Abstract

In recent years, additive manufacturing has found increasing interest in the fabrication of dielectric antennas. Using additive manufacturing brings significant advantages such as design flexibility, compactness, fast and low-cost manufacturing compared to traditional fabrication methods. Dielectric antennas having dense material allow high power transfer efficiency through the lens. However, a successful 3D printing process with dense dielectric materials is a great challenge. This paper investigates the impact of main process parameters during 3D printing; namely printing speed, process temperature, and layer height on the resulted relative electrical permittivity values of dense dielectric materials. Test samples are printed with a dielectric material having ε r = 10, and relative permittivity variations of these samples are measured with a vector network analyzer in . In this way, optimum printing parameters are determined. The influence of dielectric constants of printed materials on the antenna radiation characteristics is inspected for an extended hemispherical lens antenna by a fullwave computer-aided design tool. Results demonstrate that an additively manufactured dense dielectric antenna will act as a traditionally manufactured dielectric antenna if and only if it is manufactured with optimum printing parameters.

Application of 3D and 4D Printing in Electronics

“…By measuring the electrical characteristics of the printed samples, they observed that printing settings were crucial to obtaining the desired dielectric behaviour with high permittivity and low-loss thermoplastic material. In fact, FFF-fabricated antennas showed performances comparable with the traditionally fabricated ones only using the optimized set of printing parameters [21].…”

“…FFF-fabricated antennas showed performances comparable with the traditionall fabricated ones only using the optimized set of printing parameters [21].…”

“…The antenna could be easily tuned, and its peak gain was 22.53 dB in the range of 30 GHz-40 GHz [20]. FFF printing of antennas should be performed while considering that printing parameters can deeply affect the resultant relative permiCivity value of the final objects, together with the material electrical parameters, as Tokan et al [21] investigated. They studied the influence of parameters using a sample of Preperm ABS1000 from Premix and printing it with a core XY-type printer.…”

“…By measuring the electrical characteristics of the printed samples, they observed that printing seCings were crucial to obtaining the desired dielectric behaviour with high permiCivity and low-loss thermoplastic material. In fact, (b) (c) (a) FFF printing of antennas should be performed while considering that printing parameters can deeply affect the resultant relative permittivity value of the final objects, together with the material electrical parameters, as Tokan et al [21] investigated. They studied the influence of parameters using a sample of Preperm ABS1000 from Premix and printing it with a core XY-type printer.…”

3D Printed Low Profile Strip-based Helical Antenna

“…In [14][15][16], a wire helix, a tapered helical antenna, and a horn antenna are constructed using inkjet and 3d printers, respectively. The impacts of 3D printing on the radiation characteristics of dielectric lens antenna are analyzed in [17]. Measurement of electrical parameters of PLA material and thereby construction of three antennas have been presented in [18].…”