Parabolic antennas, which are wildly used as high-gain antennas for point-to-point communications, need many iterations of design-fabrication-test in parabolic antenna development. However, traditional molding via mechanical processing takes a long manufacturing cycle and high cost. In this paper, a 3D-printed CF/nylon composite parabolic mold for CF/epoxy parabolic antenna is studied. It’s found that the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of 3D-printed CF/nylon composite is usually anisotropic due to the low adhesion between printed layers and the aligned short carbon fiber along the printing trace. Here an inclined mode of 3D printing could uniform the CTE of the antenna mold and solve the problems of large printing steps and the separation of supports and mold occurred in horizontal and vertical modes, respectively. The parabolic mold also reveals high profile precision with a low root mean square (RMS) deviation of 0.14 mm. Utilizing the 3D-printed CF/nylon composite mold, parabolic antenna skin with low surface RMS deviation of 0.16 mm was successfully fabricated by laying CF/epoxy prepreg and curing in autoclave. This research about isotropic and smooth 3D-printed CF/nylon mold may support the low-cost and rapid mold development for microwaves relay links on ground and satellite communication antennas.

中文翻译：

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CF/环氧树脂抛物面天线用CF/尼龙复合模具的3D打印

抛物面天线广泛用作点对点通信的高增益天线，在抛物面天线开发中需要多次迭代设计-制造-测试。然而，传统的机械加工成型制造周期长，成本高。在本文中，研究了用于 CF/环氧树脂抛物面天线的 3D 打印 CF/尼龙复合抛物面模具。发现 3D 打印的 CF/尼龙复合材料的热膨胀系数 (CTE) 通常是各向异性的，这是由于打印层与沿打印轨迹对齐的短碳纤维之间的附着力低。在这里，3D打印的倾斜模式可以使天线模具的CTE均匀，并解决了打印步骤大以及水平和垂直模式下分别出现的支撑和模具分离的问题。抛物线模具还表现出高精度，具有 0.14 毫米的低均方根 (RMS) 偏差。利用 3D 打印的 CF/尼龙复合模具，通过铺设 CF/环氧树脂预浸料并在高压釜中固化，成功制造了具有 0.16 mm 低表面 RMS 偏差的抛物面天线蒙皮。这项关于各向同性和光滑的 3D 打印 CF/尼龙模具的研究可能支持地面和卫星通信天线上微波中继链路的低成本和快速模具开发。