Hello all, I want to create a printed antenna on a suitable shapeway substrate. Does anyone have an idea if it is possible to create a radiating antenna on the materials provided by shapeway? Thanks. Mayur
Hi Mayur, Welcome to Shapeways! I haven't a clue about the workings of an antenna, so I'm not sure if the materials would be able to act as an antenna, but if it is the base shape you're needing for doing post production work on to make a functioning antenna then, yes, just about anything you can imagine can be printed. Paul
Hi Paul, Thanks for the mail. Actually , i want to use the shapeway material as the substrate (base) on which i would like to print or stick an antenna which would be a thin Cu strip. I would like to know some physical properties like the dielectric wrt frequency, loss tangent. http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/20/nanoparticle-inks-print-3 d-antennas-orders-of-magnitude-better/
An example: the technical name for WSF is Nylon 12. If you look that up on the web, you will find: http://www.goodfellow.com/A/Polyamide-Nylon-12.html But, this doesn't give you the dielectric constant at different frequency settings. It may be available somewhere.. you'd just have to research it deeper.
I have characterized all of the materials provided from shapeways and they are all very lossy with a loss tangent of at least 0.05 at 1 GHz. The white, strong, and flexible is particularly bad because of its extreme porosity. Depending on humidity its dielectric loss tangent varies from at a minimum (after desiccating the sample for 72 hours) of 0.07 up to 0.2 after sitting out in an ambient relative humidity of 35% for 24 hours. If you do move forward with your idea don't forget that most cyanoacrylate based adhesives are stupidly lossy in the RF-microwave bands. Make sure you choose an rf grade adhesive.
Hello all, Thanks for sharing the valuable information. I will be testing a micorstrip antenna on WSF antenna soon. Will share my results! @Tamert What do you mean by RF grade adhesive?