3D Printing Technology for Rapid Manufacturing Discone Antenna Based on PLA Material

This paper presents the use of three-dimensional (3D) printing technology for rapid manufacturing a discone antenna. The advanced 3D printing technology can provide antenna prototypes rapidly manufactured in comparable time frames as conventional antenna prototypes. Here, the 3D printing technology is applied to manufacture the cone part of proposed discone antenna based on polylactic-acid (PLA) material, while the disc part is realized using a copper metal sheet. The proposed discone antenna which is intended as an electromagnetic interference (EMI) sensor is designed to produce a wideband frequency response of 700 MHz - 6000 MHz. The characterization result shows that the manufactured discone antenna has the operating bandwidth for -10 dB reflection coefficient of more than 5300 MHz with the lowest operating frequency of 698 MHz.