Conformal and phased array antennas play a critical role in communication system for numerous military, civil, and commercial entities. Today, there is a growing need for these antennas to be miniaturized, integrated, and agile over different frequency bands. As such, these antennas can become very complex and expensive to manufacture using traditional approaches. Additive Manufacturing (AM), which is the process of joining materials to make objects from 3D model data, has emerged as an enabling technology to address these issues. The technology has matured sufficiently enabling production level parts as well as prototypes. Furthermore, advancements in additive multi materials including conductive circuitry are enabling more complex and integrated parts while reducing the number of processes. At Ball Aerospace, we have utilized multiple AM technologies to design, fabricate, and test RF antennas. A novel, inexpensive method has been vetted to rapidly prototype RF design elements using a combination of RF modeling, solid modeling, stereolithography, and aerosol jet technologies. This paper utilizes a specific example to illustrate the journey through the design, fabrication, and testing of a conic antenna including lessons learned.
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