3D printing of CF/nylon composite mold for CF/epoxy parabolic antenna

Yi Chen,Jiang Lu,Qing Guo,Lei Wan

doi:10.1177/1558925020969484

Yi Chen, Jiang Lu + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/1558925020969484

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Abstract

Parabolic antennas, which are wildly used as high-gain antennas for point-to-point communications, need many iterations of design-fabrication-test in parabolic antenna development. However, traditional molding via mechanical processing takes a long manufacturing cycle and high cost. In this paper, a 3D-printed CF/nylon composite parabolic mold for CF/epoxy parabolic antenna is studied. It’s found that the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of 3D-printed CF/nylon composite is usually anisotropic due to the low adhesion between printed layers and the aligned short carbon fiber along the printing trace. Here an inclined mode of 3D printing could uniform the CTE of the antenna mold and solve the problems of large printing steps and the separation of supports and mold occurred in horizontal and vertical modes, respectively. The parabolic mold also reveals high profile precision with a low root mean square (RMS) deviation of 0.14 mm. Utilizing the 3D-printed CF/nylon composite mold, parabolic antenna skin with low surface RMS deviation of 0.16 mm was successfully fabricated by laying CF/epoxy prepreg and curing in autoclave. This research about isotropic and smooth 3D-printed CF/nylon mold may support the low-cost and rapid mold development for microwaves relay links on ground and satellite communication antennas.

Highlights

High-gain and high-directional parabolic antennas are widely used in point-to-point communication such as microwave relay links and satellite.[1,2,3] Parabolic antennas need high profile accuracy to reflect the directional signal to the receiver.[4,5,6] Normally, the traditional forming process of parabolic antenna involves upper and lower metal molds.[7,8] due to the variant demands of satellite antenna on weight and antenna profile,[9,10] satellite parabolic antenna often needs to fabricate a serious of molds when developing a new parabolic antenna
An acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) mold was built for composite articular orthoses,[26] in which clay was filled in the inner of mold to Beijing Spacecrafts, China Academy of Space Technology, Beijing, China
3D printing technology was studied for advanced parabolic antenna mold using the filament of nylon with chopped carbon fiber as the 3D printing materials

Summary

Introduction

High-gain and high-directional parabolic antennas are widely used in point-to-point communication such as microwave relay links and satellite.[1,2,3] Parabolic antennas need high profile accuracy to reflect the directional signal to the receiver.[4,5,6] Normally, the traditional forming process of parabolic antenna involves upper and lower metal molds.[7,8] due to the variant demands of satellite antenna on weight and antenna profile,[9,10] satellite parabolic antenna often needs to fabricate a serious of molds when developing a new parabolic antenna. 3D printing technology was studied for advanced parabolic antenna mold using the filament of nylon with chopped carbon fiber as the 3D printing materials. We investigated the coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) of 3D-printed short carbon fiber reinforced composite specimen at various direction and the influence of 3D printing modes (horizontal, vertical, inclined modes) on quality of 3D-printed parabolic antenna mold.

Results

Conclusion