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Improving the Strength-to-Weight Ratio of 3-D Printed Antennas: Metal Versus

Polymer

Article  in  IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters · September 2018

DOI: 10.1109/LAWP.2018.2870944

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2018.2870944, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
Improving the Strength-to-Weight Ratio of 3D Printed Antennas: Metal vs
Polymer
Deepak Shamvedi, Oliver J. McCarthy, Eoghan O’Donoghue, Paul O’Leary, Ramesh Raghavendra
Abstract— The research presented here compares the weight and
structural strength of several lightweight 3D metal printed fractal antennas
to the equivalent metal-coated polymer 3D printed antenna. Lattice
structures are recognized for their advantages in providing lightweight,
stiff and shock-resistant structures. In this work, they are used to create a
strong, lightweight metal antenna, which is even comparatively lighter than
the metal-coated 3D printed polymer antenna, and with higher structural
strength. RF performance, similar to the CST simulation results, was
confirmed for each antenna. Mechanical testing has also been conducted, to
compare the strength-to-weight ratio of lightweight metal printed
structures to that of the polymer one.
Index Terms—3D printing, Additive Manufacturing, lattice structure,
lightweight antenna
I. INTRODUCTION
3D printing is an Additive Manufacturing (AM) technique, which
allows the component to be built in a layer-by-layer fashion to form
a 3D object using digital blueprints. A major advantage of 3D
printing lies in the production of components, where conventional
manufacturing techniques have reached their limits. The technology
allows one to build virtually any geometry imaginable, within some
printing constraints, allowing designers to explore previously
unexplored possibilities. When 3D printing was first developed,
three decades ago, as rapid prototyping, the sole purpose of it was to
prototype an object in order to test functionality [1][2]. However,
while prototyping is still an important use, now 3D printing has also
been adopted in a plethora of fields, such as architecture, medical,
automotive etc. to innovate and improve end products.
Of the many promising applications of 3D printing, the design of
microwave components is the focus of this research work. As in
other areas of AM, designs, which were un-manufacturable, can now
be realized with the fine detail often needed for microwave
components, often using a plastic polymer in Stereolithography
(SLA) or FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling), where, the physical
structure is fabricated using non-conducting thermoplastics and is
then usually metallized or painted in order to make the printed
electromagnetic component functional [3]-[6]. Fabricating
microwave components in this way has the advantage of being
lightweight (compared to the same component being fabricated using
conventional manufacturing techniques and from metal) but on the
other hand does not offer significant mechanical structural strength.
In addition to that, the electromagnetic behavior of the component is
also distorted, if contact with other objects causes any abrasion on its
coated surface. Also, metal-coated polymer components are not a
good choice for harsh environments, or for high-power applications
[6].
This work considers an alternative approach to microwave
antennas production, also with improved structural strength, by
printing equivalent, lightweight all-metal antennas. Four versions of
Sierpinski gasket antenna were printed; one polymer and three metal.
Manuscript received April 1, 2018
D. Shamvedi and P. O’Leary are with Department of Engineering
Technology, Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford, Ireland; (e-mail:
20061369@mail.wit.ie) (e-mail: poleary@wit.ie).
O. J. McCarthy, E. O’Donoghue, and R. Raghavendra are with SEAM
Research Centre, Waterford Institute of Technology , Waterford, Ireland; (e-
mail: rraghavendra@wit.ie).
1536-1225 (c) 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
All the antennas were printed with identical external dimensions and
thus RF performance. Considering the minimum skin depth, and
exploiting the potential of the DMLS technique to print very thin
walls, two lighter weight metal antennas were manufactured keeping
their overall outer structural dimensions unchanged, but with non-
solid internal structures.
The aim of this research is to show that DMLS can manufacture
microwave components that have all of the desired electromagnetic
properties, but with higher strength-to-weight ratios, than the
polymer counterpart. A description of the Sierpinski gasket antennas
is presented in Section II, followed by the detailed design and the
fabrication of the 3D metal antennas and their mechanical strength-
to-weight comparison with the polymer equivalent are presented in
Section III. Section IV describes their RF characterization.
II. SIERPINSKI GASKET ANTENNA
The Sierpinski gasket is named after the Polish mathematician
Sierpinski, who described some of the main properties of a fractal
shape in 1916 [7]. The discontinuities (or fractals), increase the
perimeter of the material, due to which the antenna achieves multiple
electrical lengths, to receive and transmit electromagnetic radiation
within a specified area or surface, which leads to multiband behavior
[8]. Self-similar and other related fractal-shaped antennas have
attracted much research, thanks to their geometrical properties, to
produce small, multiband antennas, high-directivity antennas, low
side-lobe antennas and under-sampled array antennas [9][10].
The selection of the Sierpinski gasket antenna was partly due to
our previous fabrication of complex-shaped, 3D metal printed, 2nd
iteration Sierpinski gasket antennas [11]. However, the weight
reduction presented in this research could also be replicated on other
3D inverted cone antennas as well [12][13], including our 3D metal
printed monocone antenna [14].
III. ANTENNA DESIGN AND FABRICATION
3D printing can manufacture complex, lightweight structures, with
the help of non-solid interiors and unit cell lattice structures. The
repeating unit lattice is a 3D periodicity, open-cell, cellular structure,
which contains straight struts of uniform thickness and consistent
joint angles arranged in a symmetrical fashion. Such structures offer
features such as high strength accompanied by a relatively low
weight. A brief discussion about reducing the weight of the structure
using 3D metal printing technology utilizing lattice structure has
been provided in [15][16]. Recently, one such attempt in this regard
towards the fabrication of lightweight 3D metal printed antenna has
been done in [17], where the authors have used the perforation
technique to fabricate a lightweight horn antenna. The same
technique, if applied to another antenna type, could possibly obstruct
the free flow of surface current, degrading the performance of the
microwave component. While the technique to reduce the weight of
the structure depends on the design, in this work, an attempt has been
made to keep the surface current as unaffected as possible.
The 3D metal printed antennas in this research were fabricated in a
titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V), on a DMLS EOS M280 system. The
electrical conductivity of this alloy is 5.61e+005 S/m. The printed
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2018.2870944, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
antennas are first iteration, Sierpinski gasket antennas, having a large
side length of 32.3 mm. The selection of the titanium alloy as the
fabrication material had the advantage of keeping the overall weight
of the antenna low, in comparison to an antenna fabricated from
steel, as titanium itself as a material is 45% lighter than steel. Also,
titanium possesses a high strength-to-weight ratio.
The solid, hollow and polymer antennas were modeled and
simulated for RF performance using CST. However, the lattice
structure, due to its complex geometry, could not be successfully
modelled in this manner and was done using Materialise Magics
19.01, which is better-equipped than CST to generate lattice
structures. The design file was then exported in .STL format, which
is widely acceptable by all forms of 3D printing machines.
A. Solid Metal Printed Antenna
The first antenna produced was a solid metal antenna. Due to the
complex 3D structures, all the metal antennas mentioned in this
research were fabricated with external supporting structures.
Once the solid antenna was surface treated using techniques such
as wetblasting and lastly polishing [18], the solid metal Sierpinski
antenna weighed 10.57g. In this research, all the monopole antennas
were mounted on an N-type connector feed, with the help of silver
conductive epoxy. The ground plane was the read side or the
“reflective shiny side” of a Compact Disk (CD) with a diameter of
120 mm, and thickness 1.2 mm, as shown in Fig 1.
a) b)
Fig 1: a) 3D metal printed solid Sierpinski gasket antenna, b) graphical
representation of inner cross-section of the solid antenna
The selection of a CD as a ground plane was done primarily to
exploit the thin layer of aluminum beneath the polycarbonate layer
coating. The positioning hole being in the middle of the CD was also
well suited to mounting an N-type connector centered in the ground
plane, to be used as a feed to the monopole antenna. Using a CD as a
ground plane, also allowed this part of the testing to be a controlled
parameter, and allowed rapid prototyping, as each antenna was
readily furnished with an identical ground plane configuration.
However, it must also be added that the polycarbonate layer on the
top layer of CD, has a minimum impact on the electromagnetic
performance.
B Hollow Metal Printed Antenna
In the case of a 3D Sierpinski gasket antenna, where most of the
surface current flows along the outer periphery of the antenna,
designing an antenna with a non-solid interior would have negligible
effect on its RF performance, compared to that of the solid antenna
discussed above. In that case, the next antenna after the Sierpinski
gasket solid antenna was the first attempt at a hollow antenna, or
more correctly an antenna with a non-solid interior.
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In the antenna design process, three considerations were added to
the design brief, all related to successful printing of the antennas.
The first consideration was the wall thickness of the 3D printed
antenna structure, which should be kept at a minimum given the
weight reduction goal. In that case, 1 mm wall thickness (uniform for
all the surfaces) was chosen as the best estimate to print the hollow
antenna. This value was chosen, bearing in mind the overall
structural strength, as the structure needs to be strong enough to
prevent itself from breaking during the printing process, especially in
the case when the interior of the antenna is non-solid.
The second consideration related to removing unused powder from
within the hollow structure. 3D printing of a hollow structure has the
complication of trapping unsintered material powder inside hollow
interiors. To avoid such a scenario, escape holes are recommended in
order to get the ‘trapped’ unsintered Ti-6Al-4V powder out of the
model, partly because the unsintered powder is not only recyclable
but also, if trapped inside the antenna, would add unnecessarily to
the weight. However, escape holes can disrupt the surface current,
changing the radiation characteristics of the antenna.
CST played an important role in deciding the position of escape
holes. While carrying out the simulations, it was observed that the
majority of the current flow was through the triangular surface areas
connected to the apex of the tetrahedrons as shown in Fig 2.
Fig 2: CST simulation of surface current distribution along the surface of
antenna, used also in the selection of escape hole locations
For this reason, escape holes were designed on the top flat surface
of each tetrahedron of the antenna, where the current distribution
was at its minimum. Also, in order to keep the RF attenuation to a
minimum due to conductor losses, the escape holes were limited to
only one per tetrahedron; with an opening diameter of 1 mm.
The third and most important consideration related to printing the
hollow tetrahedron, is that during printing there is a risk of drooping
of the top flat surface of the individual tetrahedrons, on which the
escape holes are included, due to the lack of any supportive base
beneath (inside) them. To overcome this, the tetrahedron apexes
were made slightly thicker, so they now make an angle of 45º,
measured with respect to the horizontal plane, as shown in Fig 3.
Fig 3: Illustration of hollow antenna with internal support
After the post-processing, the hollow metal antenna weighted
8.75g, approximately 17.2% lighter than the solid metal antenna. The
hollow antenna, mounted on an N-type connector, is shown in Fig 4.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2018.2870944, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters

a) b)
Fig 6: 3D Polymer printed Sierpinski gasket antenna a) post manufacturing b)
post metal-coating

a) b)
Once the FDM fabrication process had been completed, the next
Fig 4: a) 3D metal printed hollow Sierpinski gasket antenna, b) graphical
representation of inner cross-section of the hollow antenna task was to treat the surface porosity of the printed part, using resin,
as porosity presents an obstacle later in the uniform coating process.
Electroless plating was chosen over the other coating methods, to
C. Inner Lattice Metal Printed Antenna guarantee a uniform metal-coating thickness of 15-20 µm, of the
calculated skin depth, on the surface of the polymer printed antenna.
The next non-solid antenna aimed to further improve the strength-
This was also important to keep the weight of the polymer antenna at
to-weight ratio, by using inner lattice structures, as shown in Fig 5.
a minimum for fair comparison. The effective coating conductivity
Materialise Magics 19.01 software was used to design the lattice.
of the electroplated copper has been verified to be 5.61e+007 S/m.
The design chosen was rhombic dodecahedron with 30% relative
density and a unit cell length of 6 mm. This design has a low density,
long side length and is self-supportive. There is potential to improve
the strength-to-weight ratio of the overall structure by examining
different lattice designs. Other designs include face-centered cubic,
cubic, diamond, truncated cube, truncated cuboctahedron, and
rhombicuboctahedron. Further discussion on this topic is beyond the
scope of this research but can be found in [19].

a) b)
Fig 7: a) 3D metal printed polymer Sierpinski gasket antenna, b) graphical
representation of inner cross-section of the metal coated polymer antenna

Fig 7 illustrates the Sierpinski gasket polymer antenna post metal-

a) b)
Fig 5: a) 3D metal printed lattice Sierpinski gasket antenna, with wider
diameter (2mm) escape holes, b) graphical representation of inner cross-
section of the lattice antenna
With the interior lattice offering strength, it was possible to reduce
the outer antenna wall thickness to 0.5 mm, compared to the
strength-defined minimum wall thickness of 1 mm, previously used
for the hollow antenna. Similar to the hollow antenna, the inner
lattice antenna also required the inclusion of escape holes, to get the
trapped metal powder out of the 3D printed structure. However, in
this antenna the escape hole diameter was 2 mm. Increasing the
diameter was essential, as it would otherwise have been too difficult
to remove the unsintered powder from the more complex internal
geometry. Following the post-processing steps, the antenna weighed
6.01g, which was 43.1% lighter than the solid metal antenna.
coating. Once this whole process had been completed, the polymer
antenna weighed 6.63g, which is 37.2% lighter than the solid metal
antenna.
In order for lightweight 3D printed antennas to be useful for some
microwave engineering applications, some of their other mechanical
properties, apart from their weight, may also be required. In the case
of this research, the compression yield strength is quantified, so
various strength-to-weight ratios will be eventually available for
selection, depending on the particular application requirement. As
destructive testing has been used in this research to determine the
compressive strength, instead of compressing the printed antennas,
the testing has been performed on four representative 3D printed
cube types, each of size 10 mm x 10 mm x 10 mm, where each cube
mimics as much as possible their equivalent antenna’s mechanical
properties as shown in Fig 8.

D. Polymer Printed Antenna

FDM was used for the 3D polymer printed structure. The antenna
Fig 8: 3D printed cubes for mechanical testing, arranged according to their
developed here was printed on ABS, with a dielectric permittivity of
weight, left to right: solid, hollow, polymer and lattice
2.8, as shown in Fig 6.

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2018.2870944, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters

The weight of the different antennas types and their relative cubes
strength-to-weight ratios are detailed in Table 1.

Table 1: Mechanical properties comparison of 3D printed components

Strength-to-weight
S.no Antenna type Weight (g) ratio of the printed
cubes (Mpa/g)
1 Solid 10.57 350.5
2 Hollow 8.75 298.8
3 Lattice 6.01 165.7
4 Polymer 6.63 33.7
Fig 9: Simulated and measured S11 comparison graph of Sierpinski
It can be clearly seen that the inner lattice structure has much lightweight antennas
higher structural strength compared to its polymer counterpart, even
if their weights are marginally similar. In addition, to the S11 measurement, the antenna gain
At this stage, there are four points which are worth mentioning. measurements were performed the metal antennas, at their resonant
Firstly, the weight comparison made above is not valid for all frequency of 6.03 GHz. On the other hand, the gain measurement for
polymer versus metal antennas, as this only works for a subset of the polymer printed antenna was performed at 5.8 GHz. The
antennas and varies from design-to-design. Secondly, the material measured and simulated gain of all 3D printed antennas were found
selection is also an important aspect for the weight comparison of the to be 4.8 dB (± 0.5dB) as shown in Fig 10.
antennas, i.e. the better weight performance of the titanium lattice
antenna over the polymer would not occur if steel had been used
instead. Thirdly, no efforts have been made in this research, to
reduce the weight of the polymer antenna any further, by designing
lattice or hollow structures inside. This would reduce the weight of
the structure but on the other hand would further deteriorate the
structural strength of the polymer antenna. Lastly, while ABS has
been used in this research, there are other polymers available, which
possess higher tensile strength. One such polymer is ULTEM 1010,
which is a high-strength, high resistant, 3D printing thermoplastic
[20], and could be a possible replacement for the ABS polymers.
However, as research is more focused on highlighting the proof-of-
concept of lightweight metal printed components. Therefore, further
discussion on this topic is beyond the scope of this research work

IV. RF CHARACTERIZATION
As S11 the simulation plots for all the antennas were the same,
only one graph has been used to compare with the measured
antennas plots, as shown in Fig 9. The difference between the
simulated and measured graphs can be explained by small variations
in the conductive radius around the feed of an antenna, due to the
application of conductive epoxy glue used to mount the antenna to
the energizing circuitry. A similar issue was faced in our previous
research work on 3D metal printed 2nd iteration Sierpinski gasket
antenna and has been detailed in [11]. Due to this, the simulation
antenna resonant dip corresponding to 5.35 GHz shifted upwards in
the manufactured antennas, to 5.8 GHz. Further shift of the measured
results is due to the application of conductive epoxy around the feed
of the monopole, due to which all the metallic antenna showed the
same resonance shift to 6.03 GHz. On the other hand, in the case of
the polymer antenna, where the resonant frequency has shifted to 5.8
GHz, this was due to the polymer antenna being fabricated initially
with identical dimensions to those of the metal antennas. However,
due to the subsequent application of epoxy resin and then a
conductive metal-coating of a few microns, the combined new height
of the antenna increased by up to 3 mm, with the shifting resonant
frequency corresponding to the increased wavelength. Although the
shifts in the resonant frequencies for the antennas are quite small,
this should nonetheless be considered prior to the antenna design and
fabrication. One such example has been proposed in [14], by 3D
printing the signal feed along with the antenna circuitry eliminating
the mounting step completely for future applications
Fig 10: Simulated and measured realized E-plane gain of 3D printed
antennas a) Solid b) Hollow c) Lattice d) Polymer
V. CONCLUSION
In this research, three 3D metal printed antennas were
investigated, with a view to reducing antenna weight, while
considering also their compression strength and maintaining the
same RF performance. In contrast to the polymer antennas, which
are well known in industry, due in part to their lightweight
properties, in this paper, a metal printed inner lattice antenna has
been proposed, which is even lighter and stronger than the polymer
3D printed antenna produced here.
The manufactured antennas in this research are all relatively
small, with a total vertical height of only 28 mm. However, this
design can scale in every respect linearly, with the resonant
frequencies changing with the length change. As the design scales
linearly, the weight increase for each antenna and the weight
difference between antennas will also scale linearly.

1536-1225 (c) 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2018.2870944, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
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