An Electroplated 3D Printed Waffle Type Waveguide for Ku-Band Application

In this paper, we report an electroplated 3D printed waffle type waveguide for submillimeter wave application. We designed the waffle type waveguide for Ku-band application. The waffle type waveguide consists of a waveguide part and two low pass filter parts for electromagnetic wave transmission and attenuation, respectively. In the fabrication, a fused deposition modeling (FDM) resin 3D printing technique was used to obtain low-cost device, and electroplating was performed to reduce transmission loss. By the S-parameter measurement, the operation of the waffle type waveguide was verified. We obtained reflection loss less than -20 dB, and the lowest insertion loss of -0.78 dB at frequencies from 16.7 GHz to 19.7 GHz.