3-D Screen Printing: Efficient Additive Manufacturing of Groove Gap Waveguide Filters in D-Band

In this letter, the design and additive manufacturing (AM) of a groove gap waveguide (GGW) filter in the <tex-math notation="LaTeX">D</tex-math> -band is presented. For this kind of filter, 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 millimeter-wave area is validated by a third-order bandpass filter prototype in <tex-math notation="LaTeX">D</tex-math> -band, which was manufactured and electrically characterized.