A Novel Manufacturing Method for Microwave Components by Lost Wax Casting

• Published in: IEEE Access
• Main Authors: David Panusch, Lucas Pelchen, Sebastian Muller, Gerald Gold
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2023-01-01
• Subjects: 3D-printing; additive manufacturing; WR12; E-band; MJT; lost wax casting
• Online Access: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10066171/

A novel manufacturing strategy for the detailed fabrication of complex and mechanically robust microwave components is presented. Additive printing of the full wax positive model with a multijet printer allows free shaping on the one hand, while metal casting provides mechanical stability for a variety of applications on the other. In addition to that a slotted waveguide model is used to improve the post-processing and performance. This combination is used with a rectangular waveguide for the E-band to demonstrate the performance of this manufacturing method at higher frequencies than previous publications. Measurements on the samples show comparable attenuation coefficients to the milled split-block counterpart, i.e., less than 5dB/m, a good root mean square (RMS) surface roughness of the inner surfaces with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$S_{\textrm {q}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> &#x003D; <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$5.85\; {\mathrm { \mu \text {m} }}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and astonishingly fine tolerances of 8.8&#x00B1;40.3 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\mathrm { \mu \text {m} }}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> overall. Comparisons are also made between other published additive manufacturing processes.