Horn Antenna Manufacturing Using Additive Manufacturing Techniques

Additive manufacturing methods, also known as 3D printing, have proven to offer many advantages in manufacturing a wide range of products. These methods have advantages of rapid prototyping, rapid production, and the ability to produce mechanical parts that cannot be realized with traditional machining or casting methods. Various methods have been developed which use a wide variety of raw materials and methods. For example, the Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) method has been used in 3D printing of antennas [1], where metal conductivity is required along with accurate mechanical tolerancing. Other methods using plastic such as stereolithography (SLA) where a liquid photopolymer resin is cured using an ultraviolet laser and Fused Deposit Modeling (FDM) material extrusion where a plastic wire is melted and deposited layer by layer to construct the part are being used to produce RF components and antennas. In the case of plastics, a conductive layer must be deposited onto the plastic to ensure conductivity. Recent work toward the development of horn antennas produced using SLS, SLA and extrusion methods has been accomplished. The methods have been shown to produce horn antennas capable of meeting a variety of applications in the test and measurement industry where accuracy and repeatability are key metrics. A comparison of methods is presented along with advantages and disadvantages. Performance data will be presented for some horns showing the capabilities of the various methods.