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

In this paper, the design and additivemanufacturing of a Groove Gap Waveguide (GGW) filterin the D-band is presented. For this kind of filters, themanufacturing of very small periodic pin structures is necessary.The conventional manufacturing of these structures by CNCmilling is time-consuming and high-precision milling machinesare extremely expensive. Other manufacturing processes suchas screen printing are, therefore, required for the cost-effectiveand efficient production of large quantities. The screen printingprocess is presented and its suitability for the production ofGGW components in the millimetre-wave area is validated bya third-order bandpass filter prototype in D-band, which wasmanufactured and electrically characterized.