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VALIDDANTENNESS project ends with the best possible ending of a great project: fantastic technical results, future lines ahead, partners meeting and networking. The goal was to study and validate the use of Additive Manufacturing techniques for antennas for space applications.

 

Why Additive Manufacturing?

With the arrival of New Space, the space sector has changed completely. This is why new fabrication techniques such as additive manufacturing are becoming increasingly important, because they make lighter systems possible. Within this framework, our main goal was studying and validating metal additive manufacturing techniques for antennas for space applications, focusing on small satellites.

 

The project and conclusions

To make a further study, we have designed two different but quite similar radiating chains to be manufactured through CNC and SLM manufacturing techniques, in order to compare their results.

Some of the final conclusions are:

✔ Two K/Ka-band radiating chains have been designed for CNC and SLM (AM) manufacturing.
✔ The final parts have undergone finite element simulations, metallographic tests and environmental tests (vibration and termal cycling).
✔ The performance of both chains is great, achieving an Axial Ratio less than 1 dB in the whole frequency band.
✔ The weight reduction thanks to SLM manufacturing was around 50%.

To wrap up, here it’s a recap video with the conclusions of the project. Additive manufacturing has been successfully validated for commercial RF components and the designed system has been tested and qualified under real space sector specifications 👌🏻

Have a look to the participants opinions:

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New incorporations to Anteral Team ❤