Fortify

A head-to-head measurement of Fortify’s 3D printed Luneburg lens’ demonstrated improvements in gain, efficiency, weight, and manufacturability over a legacy Rexolite lens solution. Fortify’s 3D printed Luneburg lens demonstrated improvements in gain, efficiency, weight, and manufacturability over the legacy Rexolite lens solution.

Radiofrequency engineers and microwave/mmWave antenna designers are often limited by the strict constraints of traditional antenna manufacturing methods, leading to compromised performance, reduced innovation, or ballooning costs. Fortify’s innovative additive manufacturing technology has unlocked possibilities, design freedoms, and more powerful antenna systems across a wide range of antenna applications. This RF applications guide presents nine ways that 3D-printed dielectrics will transform and enhance your antenna design.

Segmentation is a powerful tool in extending the capabilities of otherwise workpiece size or workspace limited Additive Manufacturing technologies, and can enable the fabrication of complex dielectric structures. This is especially critical for highly intricate dielectric structures, such as metastructures, and Luneburg/GRIN RF lenses greater than 4.5” in diameter.

With a legacy of innovative antenna design, the Advanced Technology Group of Envisticom, LLC, recently spun off as the Apothym Technologies Group, LLC (or ATG), is always in search of new antenna technologies having the potential to advance the capabilities of warfighter, satellite, and terrestrial communications. This is why the engineers with ATG sought to evaluate Fortify’s 3D printed low-loss and low-dielectric permittivity polymer resin for use in advanced antennas. With this technology Fortify engineers have been able to print extremely intricate and high resolution gradient index of refraction (GRIN) dielectric lenses that operate well at microwave/mm-wave frequencies. These lenses, impossible or extremely difficult to manufacture with traditional methods, can provide substantial antenna gain in a relatively compact shape and with minimal weight.

This case study discusses the process from design, simulation, and testing of such a GRIN dielectric lens, and provides results that show the promise of this technology in cutting-edge communications systems.

Traditional fabrication approaches of Microwave/mmWave devices have material, geometry, tolerance, and/or repeatability challenges. New 3D printable resins with desirable Microwave/mmWave characteristics are enabling 3D DLP manufacturing of low-loss and low-dielectric constant material for prototyping and production. This whitepaper discusses applications of this 3D dielectric structure fabrication process.

RF markets are demanding greater performance for wireless links and sensing applications. Active Antenna Systems are the incumbent solution, but come with high cost and complexity. This white paper demonstrates how polymer dielectric 3D printing is used to create higher performance RF devices that can reduce complexity and cost of RF systems.