3-D Screen Printing: Efficient Additive Manufacturing of Groove Gap Waveguide Filters in <i>D</i>-Band
Kay Reuter, Patrick Boe, Daniel Miek, Michael Höft, Thomas Studnitzky, C. Zhong, Thomas Weißgärber, Isabel Olaya Leon
Abstract
In this letter, the design and additive manufacturing (AM) of a groove gap waveguide (GGW) filter in the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$D$</tex-math> </inline-formula> -band is presented. For this kind of filter, the manufacturing of very small periodic pin structures is necessary. The conventional manufacturing of these structures by CNC milling is time-consuming, and high-precision milling machines are extremely expensive. Other manufacturing processes such as screen printing are, therefore, required for the cost-effective and efficient production of large quantities. The screen printing process is presented, and its suitability for the production of GGW components in the millimeter-wave area is validated by a third-order bandpass filter prototype in <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$D$</tex-math> </inline-formula> -band, which was manufactured and electrically characterized.