Speakers
Description
In this work, Metal Additive Manufacturing (MAM) has been evaluated as alternative manufacturing technique to create seamless single-body 6 GHz pure copper prototypes. Preliminary printing tests have been performed to evaluate the printability since the absence of internal supports was mandatory.
The success of the creation of the first prototypes allowed us to proceed with further investigations: several surface treatments for smoothening the down-skin regions have been assessed, thanks to which the surface roughness (Ra) went down to less than 1 µm, starting from an initial value of 35 µm.
Other cavity prototypes have been printed, with different copper powders and different machines. Investigations about the quality of the printing have been conducted, involving tests like tomography, leak test, resonant frequency assessment, internal inspection etc.
