Advanced Hybrid Additive Manufacturing Software & Processes for Volumetric FHEs

While the hardware for hybrid additive manufacturing has made significant advancements in recent years, the software lags far behind, limiting the capabilities of the hardware and the design options available to the engineer. The present work demonstrates software and process solutions that enable automated printing of volumetric flexible hybrid electronics (VFHEs) with no modifications to existing printer hardware. In VFHEs, components can be placed at any position (x, y and z) and be oriented at any angle (theta and phi). Conductors are not limited to planar form factors and can meander smoothly throughout all three dimensions within the part. VFHEs can be manufactured into unconventional form factors and hold great promise to dramatically reduce size, weight, power, cost, and manufacturing time. Hybrid AM involves using more than one additive manufacturing process and more than one material system within the same manufacturing job. The true power of hybrid AM for FHEs lies in its capability to manufacture heterogeneously integrated volumetric structures of metals and dielectrics. While there are multiple printer options capable of hybrid AM, the lack of software severely limits what the hardware can produce. As an example, FHEs manufactured via hybrid AM are typically printed as flat conductive traces on a flexible substrate such as Kapton or printed silicon. Attempts have been made at making three-dimensional (3D) devices by stacking printed layers on top of each other, but these are 2.5D at best. Further, many of these devices are printed in multiple steps. This involves either moving the device from one printer to another during the manufacturing process or manually configuring the printer to execute multiple jobs successively to print a single device. This lack of automation leads to increased manufacturing time and costs. The advances in software we will present address these shortcomings and further enable new concepts like VFHEs. To demonstrate the technology, a single-layer frequency selective surface, a conformal and doubly-curved frequency selective surface, volumetric antennas, and 3D VFHEs. The technology will allow organizations to design and manufacture VFHEs for many different applications including medical devices, aerospace platforms, defense platforms, toys, and telecommunications to name just a few.