3D Screen Printing: Efficient Additive Manufacturing of Groove Gap Wave Guide Filters in D-band

In this paper, the design and additive manufacturing of a Groove Gap Waveguide (GGW) filter in the D-band is presented. For this kind of filters, 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 millimetre-wave area is validated by a third-order bandpass filter prototype in D-band, which was manufactured and electrically characterized.