Unveiling the Future of Antennas and RF Lenses using Radix™ 3D printable material!
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- Опубликовано: 16 июл 2024
- Antenna design engineering is being transformed rapidly by new 3D printing technologies. When Rogers Corporation announced their Radix™ 3D printable material, I made a short video cheekily asking for samples to try. The lovely folk at Rogers responded and offered to print some of my designs. (landing.rogerscorp.com/5/Radi...)
There was of course a catch... (There's always a catch) - I had to travel to the US and visit their facilities to collect the parts. Gosh!
I created the designs using OpenEMS, Fusion360 and MATLAB, and followed the same process workflow as a commercial customer would. My Artificially Intelligent Machining and Engineering Expert AIMEE is as helpful as usual, offering sage advice and being positive and encouraging. [AIMEE, stop editing these descriptions and stick to being snarky!]
I'm not an RF engineer, nor a designer. I've never worked professionally in those fields, but I've been experimenting with microwave engineering for almost fifty years. If I can create a successful component using their services, then just imagine what a professional RF design engineer could achieve.
If you are a designer or engineer and you want to try a UV cure, ceramic filled, dielectric photopolymer printing technology for lenses, feeds, low-k substrates or metallization projects, I encourage you to get in contact with Rogers via landing.rogerscorp.com/5/Radi... and see what you can achieve with Radix™.
This video was made in collaboration with Rogers Corporation and Fortify, their 3D printing partners. Full disclosure, I received a fee and expenses for this work and Rogers have reviewed the content, although I was given complete creative freedom. I'm a huge fan of Radix™ and of Rogers' products in general, and this isn't intended to be an impartial product review. Look, I'm just an un-ashamed fanboi, OK?
For the purposes of UK law, if I was a "social media influencer", this video must be considered as an advertisement.
Details about Radix™ 3D printable material: landing.rogerscorp.com/5/Radi...
Fortify, Rogers' 3D printing partner, are at 3dfortify.com/3d-printed-rf-d...
Check out MAGTREX 555 as well, it's another amazing material from Rogers Corporation www.rogerscorp.com/advanced-e...
BUY ME A COFFEE? ko-fi.com/machiningandmicrowaves
MY PATREON PAGE: / machiningandmicrowaves
Content:
00:00 The Quest
01:52 Applications
03:45 Printing Technology
05:43 Design goals
06:05 E-field animation
06:25 Rogers' lab and QA
08:27 Material tests
15:13 Never Assume
16:31 Print lab visit
21:45 Mikaelian lens
23:45 Fortify
24:37 Next steps 
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A little explainer... First, apologies for any mono audio sections. I am deaf in one ear so I sometimes miss mixing errors! Too late to fix it now, but please let me know the times when the stereo mix is wrong.
RF is just low frequency light. It behaves in a similar way to light being refracted and reflected. The effects scale with wavelength, but you can get exactly the same effects in mirrors, blocks of transparent (to light or RF) material, lenses and waveguides (or light fibres) with RF and light or infra-red. The scale difference is huge. Light is around 0.5 of a micrometre wavelength, microwaves are a few centimetres, AM radio is perhaps 300 metres wavelength. They can all be treated as waves or as photons, and quantum mechanics applies just the same to them all. When you put a pencil in a fishtank, it seems to bend. That same refraction happens with radio waves, they travel more slowly in dielectrics than in a vacuum because of the quantum effects, but that doesn't matter for large objects like these. A slanting dielectric surface can bend the rays of light or radio energy. If the slanted surface is in the shape of a curved magnifying glass, the amount of bending varies across the glass, with more bending at the edges, so a parallel beam of light like from the Sun gets focussed to a point. Exactly the same happens with radio waves so long as the glass is more than ten wavelengths across and the source is emitting radio waves. You might want to use PTFE or a similar RF-transparent plastic to make the lens as it's much clearer than glass at millimetre wavelengths. At Infra red around 10 micrometres wavelength, Germanium metal lenses work well as they are transparent to IR, as is Calcium Fluoride.
OK, so we are half way. Now instead of making the lens shaped like a magnifying glass, we can change the density of the material by putting larger holes (or more holes) in it to reduce its average density, varying that density across the body of the material. If you pick the rate of change of density just right, the effect on mmWave energy is indistinguishable from that of the original magnifying glass shape, but it's way easier to make and mount. You can also do really complex tapers of density that would be impossible to machine. That's the benefit of this technology, it takes us way beyond what can be done with casting, injection moulding, electroforming, laser cutting, water jets, Wire EDM or CNC machining, at least for ceramic-filled photopolymers.
Explaining the smaller lens is rather more complicated as it involves waveguides!
Raytheon was doing this with laser cured resin "3d printers" in the 1970s.
@@lizzyfrizzy4969 I'd heard of something going on in the 70s or 80s but can't recall where. Might have been mentioned in Nature or New Scientist. I had no idea that it was Raytheon. Very interesting
Would this be useful for something like SpaceX's Starlink phased array?
Hypothesis: Smaller lenses means more virtual antennas.
@@jtjames79 Economics will be the driver, small earth station receivers will probably go with beam steered array chips and patch subarrays, but I can see a benefit if the geometry is right, even with beam steering to multiple concurrent source satellites. Interesting times we live in.
I work in MRI...
Don't get me started about dielectrics, standing waves, reflections, refractions, or other wave cancelations related to b1 inhomogeneity or E field effects...
THIS is how sponsored videos should be done. Make it clear right within the first 2 minutes of the video instead of sneaking it in at the last 30 seconds like some channels have done (as has come to light recently)
Kurzgesagt?
Yep. And marketing isn't always underhanded and evil. Folks who might actually find a product or service useful have to learn it exists somehow.
@@sagichnichtsowiesonicht7326 And also Veritasium a while back
Sneaking it in at the end of the video makes it so people don't skip through. Which looks better to the RUclips algorithm.
Or worse: part way through the vid and taking a full minute to ramble on about the sponsor!
This is hyperencabulator levels of jargon, but it all actually means something! Quite a workout for the old brain to keep up with you on this one!
Yeah, and this is the "translated into human" language version. It's all just magic in reality.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves ....any sufficiently advanced technology.... And all that!
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Electronics engineers construct elaborate structures of metal and exotic crystals with which to bend the raw energies of the universe to their will. It *is* magic.
@@vylbird8014 Changing my job description to "Arcane Focus Engineer"
Is that that meme-video? I thought about it while watching. Impossible for me to suss out if the jargon is real, but I think it is. Fun watch
It's always the small youtubers that surprise me with how much access they have to projects and tests like these.
Like that time I needed some images of the Great Seal Bug and persuaded the BBC folks ask certain US three letter agencies for copies of the images and they said "Sure" and I had the images soon after. It's about being cheeky and asking. The worst they can say is no. Huge props to BBC TV and Rogers Corporation for agreeing to work with me. Some other interesting collaborations are in the pipeline of videos I'm working on
all in production!! and they did a great job
I basically don't know anything at all whatsoever about anything related to RF, and yet, it's fascinating stuff. In maybe 10 years time some of your videos will start making sense to me.
Perhaps I'll start understanding them by then as well!
Can you get Aimee to do a layman's edition in English?
@@chrisstephens6673 Crikey, I'd have to take my life in my hands to ask her questions like that!
@@MachiningandMicrowaves would be worth the risk for us dummies to have the slightest notion of what I just watched.
What you need to know about RF, we design antennas, and as side effect we get useful electronics
I have never in my life heard such an epic tour-de-force of uninterrupted jargon! Congratulations!
That was the simplified version. I can do FAR worse when I'm properly fired up. Definite Turbo Encabulator territory. Buzzword Bingo
Star Trek dialogue writers ought to be all over this video.
How does one even begin to learn how EM fields reflect, refract, focus, harmonize etc against different materials and geometries? There must be a classes for this in graduate EE.
@@GnuReligion
Ask your browser a question
Research white papers on the subject
Google related patents
MAKE an EFFORT
@@GnuReligion ikr. 'Subspace communications' sound likes something kindergartners would say. The jargon in this video is next level awesome !
Absolutely NO idea what's happening but still watched the entire video. Love seeing new tech and smart people talking about stuff they are passionate about. Hope this new tech can make advancements in the fields being discussed. Thankyou for this video 😊
It's a pleasure, I had so much fun making this one and having the privilege of meeting all those amazing people
XD I love the combination of this:
_Absolutely NO idea what's happening_ and _in the fields being discussed_
Or in other words. No clue but sounds amazing and useful.
For an "amateur," you certainly sound like you have a great understanding of microwave antennas and techniques. Better than many engineers!
Sorry about the beastly AI comment spambot tthat has crawled into the comments here, truly a hateful use of technology!
I've been messing with microwave tech since I was 13, back in the early 1970s, and I read a LOT of scientific papers and trade press. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing but have an inquisitive brain and no fear of failure. A dangerous mixture!
@@MachiningandMicrowaves I dont understand any of this microwave stuff, but im inspired to learn more! Thank you for introducing this to me!
@@abhigyanrastogi1662 I've been fascinated by microwave radio tech since I was 14 years old. Fifty years later I'm still just as fascinated. RF isn't black magic when you understand the maths and physics, but it certainly seems that way from the outside!
İ was surprised he still called himself an amateur after 50 yoe. Yeesh. I'm 22 so he has more than double of my lifetime in experience. That's just wild to me
@@MachiningandMicrowaves I studied electrical engineering and I had some introduction to RF. I have to disagree because RF is black magic.
3d printing really is a game changer, not ideal for mass production but for more specialist stuff like this they really shine
Machining gradient index lenses is possible, but CNC drilling 20,000 tiny holes in ten different sizes isn't exactly scalable either!
That's where you're wrong! I've used 3D printing to mass produce parts because it was ultimately cheaper than making a mold.
Just like the space station has now, futire homes will have a 3d printer be an integral component of the home...
@@onradioactivewaves I think I would prefer a lathe, mill, CNC laser, CNC machining centre, injection moulding ram, metalcasting kit, furnace, forge, electroforming gear, and about ten other bits of kit before a 3d printer. Services that use big industrial printers within an easy delivery distance like many bureau services already provide, would be much nicer. Printers are noisy, slow, unreliable, smelly and take up a lot of space when not in use. Maybe one day they will improve, but I'd much prefer a bureau with fast delivery if local collection until they mature a lot. We are still where we were with computers in the late 1970s as far as hone units are concerned. Still very much for nerds like me as an end in itself, but theres nothing wrong with that, we did ok with computers, didn't we!
1000 printers can output a bunch
Such a relief to read the comments and see that I'm not the only one watching this and feeling like some ancient Anunnaki language is being used to describe these magical devices.
As a non-specialist outsider who doesn't work professionally in anything connected with RF, Microwave or electronics, I was amazed how much of what was discussed made perfect sense to me, but I've been immersed in this tech for fifty years as a hobbyist. It still seems like magic to me even though I know the equations and the underlying physics. I'll try to get an explanatory video out in normal human language soon!
As an inventive entrepreneur, the very first 2 minutes of your video blessed my heart. If only half the people in this world were half as nice as you, I'd be alot more enthusiastic. But the ones who succeed are the best and the sweetest, the most reasonable.
You may not be a RF engineer but you sure know a whole heck of a lot about RF stuff. Volumes more than I do to say the least. But all in all the technology looks like it has the potential to change the way antennas are designed. Also the production quality of the video was absolutely stellar. Very well done.
I had a pile of fun making it, but as well as "Never work with kids or animals", I would say "never interview techies" as it is a huge challenge to keep them in the same universe as normal humans for long enough. They were all BRILLIANT to work with. I was going to do a spoof facial ID of Chris, but using his gloved hands. I was too tired by the end to do it. Boooo!
Also, I know a huge amount of rubbish about all sorts of useless things as a result of reading scientific papers and textbooks and doing Astrophysics degrees for fun when the grandchildren moaned about how us Old People had it SOOOOOO easy and they had all this hard Education and Exams thing. "I'll show 'em", I thought. I had massive fun doing that degree, even though I was rather rusty after a 30 year gap since last being at Uni. There are some horrible mistakes in colour grading and sound and editing and some missing segments where I thought "Oh, the second camera is running so I can just use that footage while I pick this one up after knocking the tripod" - except the second camera wasn't running, so I missed some of Colby's exposition. Give it another 20 videos and I might get vaguely competent. I'm studying two courses on how to do editing and sound, and now I'm learning Davinci Resolve Studio, as if I don't have anything to be getting on with!
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Massive respect for that. I finally majored in CompSci after dropping out of Astrophysics. Maybe I'll give it another go when I'm retired ;)
Good on them for hosting and sponsoring you. Its great to see businesses embrace content creators. If I had a reason to use this company, I definitely would because of this video.
I am an live audio engineer who thought that I had a good understanding of RF thanks to our use of RF in the (dwindling) UHF band. I would consider myself to be a nerd, and above the average in intelligence; but this video made me feel down stupid. Thank you for that.
Explain "dwindling" when referring to the UHF?
@@AlessioSangalli likely a reference to reserved frequencies
Computer scientist here and this guy makes me feel like a grunting caveman.
We're in the same boat. Another victim here :D
My dad was a radio, TV, LANSAT, Radar and Missile guidance tech in the USAF.
When he retired, he worked fr M.A.R.S. ans the A.R.R.L. and taught me intensively about these issues, and I continue to hold interest in it, despite not having a super perfect education in microelectroincs.
Your dad sounds like one cool dude!
Great...stay Amazed and Well rounded.
Omg !! my bachelor thesis was producing 3d antennas on plastic surfaces (but it was a layer deposition over an already existing surface) for plastronics so this is really interesting to me :)
I understood every word spoken during this fascinating RF presentation.
(Former radar trained navy vet.)
Excellent! We decided not to simplify the discussions, but left out most of the maths and deep physics to save making it too dense. My idea was that I could do follow-ups to explain the concepts like those science vids that have an expert explain to a child, a high schooler, an undergrad and another expert in their field. That's going to be an interesting challenge for me as it will REALLY test my knowledge and grasp of the underlying mechanisms. The really deep stuff will be on my second channel @MachiningandMicrowavesPlus
I've definitely had some idle thoughts about 3d printing fractal antennae and what dopants to add to the substrate, in recent years; but never actually researched it (too much curiosity💚, too many unfinished shiny projects!😅💙🤔).
I'm glad I found this video 1st, it certainly answered some questions.
You're work is inspiring to me, and it's so great that Roger's collaborated with you at all; and the the engineers you interviewed seemed super competent.
Also, your 3rd party assisted insightful self deprecation resonates with me personally...::😂
Rogers took a leap of faith after my cheeky video request. I'm hugely grateful for the opportunity to talk about their materials and technology. For REALLY mind-blowing stuff, they have a material called Magtrex, which not only has a high relative permittivity, it also has a matching high permeability. That has the effect of allowing you to make metallized elements on the substrate which are physically small, but don't end up with a tiny bandwidth or low radiation resistance. That is hard to get your head round. Low loss for magnetic and electric fields. I'm sure there's some exciting applications for it, if only I could get my brain to encompass the possibilities. AIMEE takes the role of The Narrator from classical plays. She's partly the big sister I never had, partly my teacher from infant school who helped me get a joy for maths when I was six, partly an old girlfriend (Hi Ann!) and partly one of my ex-managers (Hi Janet!). She's also Modern, being voiced by a Python script making API calls into Google Cloud TTS and imaged by an adversarial network like thispersondoesnotexist.com
I worked with antennas and waveguides in the US military; I didn't get to design them or understand how they were designed though. I did know that antenna tech was some of the fastest changing technology out there, but couldn't understand how. It's awesome to be enlightened.
The work on Bluetooth and near-field comms antennas, cellphone antennas and Zigbee etc for Internet of Things devices is moving extremely fast. Hard to keep up with it. I might do a vid about the way it's all changing, but even just grounded coplanar waveguides, finline transitions and system-on-chip with in-package antennas are really fascinating. I have some 5 x 5 mm chips with antennas integrated right on to the substrate for 122 GHz radar. That's pretty amazing, but also the phased patch array driver chips that are turning up to do things like Starlink is another really fast-moving area.
Wow thanks rogers and thanks for making all of this cool tech available!!!
All of the team at Rogers and Fortify have put in a huge amount of effort to help me make this series of videos. Enormous thanks to them for taking a leap in the dark and taking my begging video last year seriously!
Fantastic timing i literally fell asleep at 2am reading about 3d printed waveguides and lens's and woke up to this! Great content, i look forward to part II.
I hope it will be interesting, I'll do some deep dives into the tech on my second channel when I get a chance
after witnessing the race to the bottom in the home 3d-printing market, I felt some sense of offense towards the field as a whole. However this video has given me hope and reassurance that significant progress forward has been made regarding additive manufacturing in this time, even if not yet on the consumer scale.
Thank you
The laser sintering machines for industrial use are the real game changers for me
I'm just talking to a manufacturer about a possible sponsored video using their laser-sintered metal print service, to see if it's possible to get a good enough finish for silver/gold electroplating over 316 stainless. That would be for things like waveguide combiners and perhaps antenna feeds. It might be very interesting, but I'd need some internal overhangs and that might not be possible. That's going to be a lot of work though. Also it is too expensive for a hobbyist like me so they are talking about sponsoring the vid. I guess so long as it is entirely about making useful and interesting parts with their service, it will acceptable to my audience to do another paid video in a month or two if it's interesting enough. Watch this space...
Buster Keaton clip about "how I expect this to go" was funny as hell :D
As an RF engineer, this video is pretty great!
So cool, blows my mind this is possible! Would love to see more on RF lenses
Upcoming video on some PTFE planoconvex lenses at 122 GHz and another on some large diameter stepped Fresnel Zone Plate lenses made on my manual lathe, then I have to make a batch of Rexolite dielspike/dielrod lenses for 5.7 and 10 GHz and maybe 24 GHz, so lost of lenses in the pipeline
The Loctite branded UV curer was unexpected.
Henkel make a lot of things! They are another of those really cool suppliers of the materials used in engineering that keep the world running www.henkel-adhesives.com/us/en/product/led-light-curing-systems/loctite_3d_printingeqcl36ledcurechamber.html
This video feels like I'm reading research papers. I have to study up on vocabulary and scientific concepts. That might take me the better part of 3 - 6 months before I understood what is going on.
Fantastic stuff. Truly.
The original target audience was a tiny group of RF design engineers, maybe a few hundred worldwide, but somehow 850 thousand other folks have tuned in!
Glad to see you have a sponsor, Niel
Hopefully this will open new avenues for you (even if it is additive rather than machining)
It's a one-off project for now,. I'll be back on to machining videos in a few days, I have two almost ready to release. The sponsorship fee has paid for all of the studio and shop upgrades. Also it's a material and company that I'm 100% a fan of, I'd have done this for free!
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Did Rodgers cover your flight and accomodations too?
I love the way your studio backdrop fills out over the course of this video (I keep looking for the Easter egg! 🤣)
I wasn't quite organised enough to do the visual trick. I has AIMEE set up on an iPad in the top right corner, and I was going to move everything along one cube every time there was a cutaway, but as this is only the second video I've made where I appear, there's just too much to think about.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves You need to ask Flashaholics for a sponsorship as well.
Those lenses are very intriguing!
The Mikaelians seem to work well at 24 GHz, and the unit cell size should just about work at 47 GHz. The hyperbolic secant profile should match an aspheric biconvex focussing lens, but with lots of diffraction and some reflection. I might try an anti-reflection coating, but an 8% improvement would be hard to measure. Part two will show the results in a couple of different applications
I have been thinking about using acoustic lenses (which basically are the same idea but for sound) for improving the performance of horn speakers. Most people seem to either accept horns with their flaws or reject them entirely. Few people seem interested in improving horns. Maybe I will be able to leverage this technology someday.
You need to bear in mind the wavelength of the sounds and the unit cell size if you aren't using amorphous materials. 20 kHz sound wavelength in air is 17 mm, so that puts an upper limit on cell size at maybe 2 mm unless you are using low pass filtering. Then think of the effective speed of sound in the material of the lens. The difference between electromagnetic wave velocity in air and this material is mostly less than 2:1, but sound wave velocity ratios are often much more extreme between gas phase and solid. Good luck with the project, sounds cool!
Had the same idea. And my solution is right now a modified Biradial horn/waveguide but thinking from the source and that is the diaphragm over the phaseplug to the waveguide/horn.
That works well up to 10-12khz but then the Biradial behaviour of a falling effeciency for higher frqeuncies is making some issues. Every dB that I can get more above 12khz is a huge win. But I have to be careful, otherwise I would increase harmonic distortions unproportionaly. Finding a solution for this brought me here. Interesting video!
@@christophmartin5381 my first thought about improving horn performance was to bounce the horn off a reflective diffraction grating, (probably only 1 dimension because of size limits). Then I thought of massively sectorial horns made by 3d printing. The sort of thing I was thinking of would have a huge number of sectors that continue right down to the driver. I can't see how to determine the offsets, but I think some advantage could come from making some of the sectors physically shorter by making them curve or spiral. I don't know how well it would work, but what I picture in my imagination as a first attempt would be something like 30-50 sectors on a ~60° horn.
Just found your channel and as an engineer working on UAS this was eye opening and fascinating. Some good possibilities here for integration.
Rogers would LOVE to talk to you about what they can do! They are a great bunch of folks.
I definitely understand exactly what you’re talking about. But even if I don’t, I’m learning from listening to your expertise. Thanks for putting this highly precise and detailed article out here. Love you.
This video made me so excited although I’m just a simple construction manager guy, I do live in the Phoenix, Arizona area so I paused the video to see if Rogers Corporation has any openings for anything that would get me in there. Bottle washer, floor sweeper, I don’t care. Now I know why material science engineering and electrical engineering majors next door at Arizona State University in Tempe say they feel like sports stars being courted by competing teams. With Intel, TSMC, Motorola, Rogers Corporation and so many others here it’s got to be stunningly exciting to be a new graduating engineer here.
Always exciting to hear news in the industry!
Having spent my formative years in telecoms, I understood nearly all the words in this video. Things became a bit trickier once they’d all be strung together into sentences.
I once upset the the man responsible for the microwave backbone network in the north east of England by telling him there was no place for microwave links in the telecoms core network of the future. And that was before anyone had invented dense wavelength-division multiplexing.
I worked briefly at Martlesham when I was a student, I did some work on muxing two slow data streams into a 280 Mbps stream with parity using MECL III chips for 11 GHz systems. Fun times, but fibre was already all the rage by then.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves I spent 6 years there up to 2000 followed by 17 years as a ‘home worker’ 4 miles up the road, but in reality wherever they had stuff that needed Implementing (the aforementioned DWLM network - while it was still being developed! - through public access Wi-Fi, via attempts at integrated Wi-Fi/mobile phones) I spent the last year or two of my career on site managing the implementation of GDPR for BT Business. I had an exciting and varied career which started in ‘clockwork’ telephone exchanges with a fair amount of time at the bleeding edge of technology.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves I wonder how many people understand what 'Martlesham' is/was! 🙂 I was BBC, but my Grandfather was BT.
@@Simon_Rafferty Yes, back in the day it was Post Office Research Dept I think. Then BT happened, and it was renamed Adastral Park. That summer was my first exposure to proper non-academic engineering research. Changed my life
Even in rural Arizona microwave and s-wave is being replaced by fiber as I type this. Initially everyone will get 10x the bandwidth but the main benefit is reliability
Awesome!! This must be ultra efficient and will probably save lives one day!
Man thank you for this brain food. The future of a business I already love is bright.
I loved the cake analogy. I'm afraid to say my Mums New Year cherry cake always has the fruit at the bottom.
Great work Neil. I can see how much went into producing that piece.
I didn't have to climb a single mountain, forded no streams and didn't get even the slightest bit muddy in blanket bogs though.
clearly your mum needs to pump the cherry cake batter while it's baking ;-)
@@zyeborm My Grandma knew the secrets to this from her training as a servant and cook in various stately homes. It's all in the wrist action!
This video was absolutely engaging! Being a diesel mechanic and just playing with small hobby electronics, i only ever learned the very basics of how RF works. Even with my very limited knowledge I watched through the whole video and found myself in awe of all the cool and cutting edge stuff being shown. Of course i have almost no idea how any of this works but definitely found my next subject im going to study in my free time. So interesting and such a well put together video!
Thanks! I love watching videos on the fine details of diesel and petrol engine technology, the thermodynamics and fluid mechanics and the deep tech of injectors and bearing technology and oil film dynamics. I'm such a nerd in so many fields of human endeavour
Thank you for this brilliant video showcasing something new which can be done at the cutting edge of 3D printing. This sort of inspiring technical content is exceedingly rare, but hugely important for seeding the inquisitive minds which will be solving our problems in the future. BRAVO!
I hope I can do this better in the future, this was the first time I'd interviewed anyone, first time doing a two-camera shoot, first use of lavalier wireless mics, first time I'd use a camera gimbal, first time I'd been to the USA. Now I just need to make some more videos
I watched the whole thing without having a clue as to what it is about at the start.
Very informative. Thank you.
Rogers is a good brand. This is pretty dope and can respect the collaboration. Thank you for your time sir.
They were just brilliant to work with, as were Fortify. Lots and lots of brains and competence and fizzing with ideas. Hugely stimulating
My goodness! The possible military application of this just chils my bone. But small rocketry will also benefit by a large margin.
This is making me think of the old radar used for the Safeguard (now retired) ABM system.
The 'acquisition' radar still used today is phased array but the multi component 'targeting tracking' radar used an expanded polystyrene impregnated with metallic particles. I think some internal paperwork from The Bell System called it _radar lensing._ The shape, size and arrangement was _highly classified_ but it made it possible to 'hit a bullet with a bullet' and it came down to near miraculous radar resolution for the very early 1970s.
Lenses have been used quite a bit, but making a really smooth transition is hard, typically needing either complex assembly or post-finishing. Using metal loading is another way to change the effective refractive index, and that then leads to metamaterials, where reactive metal elements are arrange to alter the phase of signals within the bulk material. I'll be using something like this for a lensing array. Metamaterials sound interesting, but that's just a cool name, I'll be looking into some practical uses later this year. Thanks for the interesting comments!
oh my god, this is awesome!! so happy i just stumbled over your channel
Pleased to have you on board. It was a huge privilege to get the opportunity to work on this project, and part two is going to be a lot of fun. I hope to put out some shorts and some other spin-off projects about the Mikaelian lenses
This just solidified my opinion that RF engineering is black magic.
Metamaterials is definitely on the Dark Side. I loved the experience of dreaming up a three-dimensionally-variable density model as a mathematical expression and seeing that turned into a solid object that you couldn't make by any of the usual manufacturing processes other than thin laminations, but then you face the issue of inhomogeneity and anisotropy from fixing the laminae together
Could you imagine your phone case being printed as an awesome antenna
They pretty much are already, that's a fascinating area of tech that has been covered in some detail, but it's still tantamount to magick
Hot damn I love when the algorithm knows the niche STEM stuff that piques my interest
I know some of the words you use, have barely any knowledge of the order you put them in and don't know what your design does (besides the obvious). But RUclips thought "hey, you are interested in 3d printing, right? That's for you".
I'm loving it. I love when people are that invested in things they do and I love to see how it comes to life.
And after having worked for Keysight for some years (developed software, I don't know anything about the products) I like to see them, it always gives me some kind of 'I somewhat helped with that'-feeling.
That's all, just wanted to share my feelings ❤
This feels like it’s in a similar level to the discovery and implementation of phased array transmitters. I admittedly know little about RF my focus is more nuclear energy but I can grasp some of the concepts
Ouu this is super interesting I've been looking into generative antennas and having a material like this would be amazing! I'm aslo imagining embed antennas that would never have worked before
Metamaterials as well. Generative algorithms work well on sild antennas, so I guess it would be feasible to use the same approach with gradient index or solid dielectric prints.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves I love living in the future :)
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Id also like to see how this could play with using different resins at the same time for structural componets iterlayed with the radix material!
I think Rogers are working on other resins, but I can easily imagine printing holes and slots for fixing thins in three dimensional space. The finished parts are very hard indeed, but the matrix resin is tough. In part two I try machining it to see what happens. The limit is now imagination (and cost of course). This isn't going to be printable in an Elegoo Saturn or similar, those Fortify printers are BEASTS. They are working on other ceramic fill resins and I saw some very exciting stuff going on. The folks at both companies are amazing to be around, they ooze enthusiasm and expertise and that felt quite inspiring. Being with smart people is always exhilarating
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Yeah I can imagine thats awesome people pushing the boundries! My interest with this would be production of 2.4-5.8 range antennas for small drones! Super excited to see what you can cook up!
Halfway through I started slapping my kitchen floor like a primate seeing the monolith.
That's an entirely correct and reasonable response, although I'd avoid throwing large objects at the kitchen ceiling
Very interesting. The possibilities this type of resign opens are amazing.
3D printers have definitely provided more opportunities for the range of metamaterials designs. Super awesome! Hadn't thought about all the variables and really nothing more than the range of structure opportunities and electroplating for some fractal antenna designs I was wondering about like spiral conical and discone like. Otherwise, I've wondered about for Faraday Cage Anechoic Chamber systems linings... areas of opportunity for improvement. Now I'm wondering about magnetics... though that's more low frequency stuff... though maybe HF transformer design maybe? Beyond me and my budget... as well (sick) as handlers wishes, wills and wants. Jelous creature on this side of the pond in some juris. Really awesome topic!
I'm going to have to comment... are you planning to show the beam characteristics of the microwave spotlight creation? HHhmmm... wondering what the propagation characteristics look like actually? Man, neat!
Magtrex is a fascinating material, with a relative permittivity that matches its permeability. Only usable up to maybe 500 MHz right now, but it allows miniaturisation of antenna elements without the usual drop in radiation resistance and bandwidth. Slightly out of my chosen frequency range, but I had a look at it while I was in the labs at Rogers and it made my brain overheat
"There's a catch! We are going to give a tour of our facility"
Why can't all contract clauses be like this?
I like contracts like that
I've learned more about radio waves in the last 10 minutes, than the previous six decades. Thanks
I've been fascinated by radio of all sorts since 1968 and it just keeps on getting more interesting
This is a fantastic channel. Hats off to you good sir! You are very much appreciated, consider this my thank you letter for all your hard work to share this knowledge. Cheers
Much appreciated!
As awesome as all of this looks and sounds: Could you maybe explain, for us interested non-RF-wizards, how these lenses and antennae differ from traditional ones, and what new funky stuff they allow doing compared to beamforming and phased arrays?
Some of that will be in a future video. Key thing is they allow patterns of gradient index that are close to impossible to produce by normal machining or casting. The applications are going to be in a wide range from rigid dielectric foams with metallized layers through to large arrays of lenses for beamforming to perhaps correction plates to improve the phase linearity of older large dishes, to who knows what. This is an enabling technology so now the next step is for antenna designers and those working with couplers and amplifiers and splitter/combiners and filters to dream up the applications
purpose-built antennae for links, tuned for optimal signal strength at a specific distance, for less power usage for signal transmission. Like a single antennae housing, with swappable printed lenses for specific distances.
One possible use case I can think of.
Better control of basically everything we could already do, and some things we couldn't do before.
It's neat stuff.
Could this be used for VHF/UHF antennas?
The issue is one of scale. A typical lens is around 10 wavelengths across, and even a dielspike needs to be around 0.7 wavelengths across and 4-5 wl long, so it gets very tricky below 3 GHz. Lens mass and cost rises roughly with the inverse cube of frequency, so a 1 GHz lens would weigh around 1000 times that of a 10 GHz lens and be ludicrously expensive. The region from 5 to 50 GHz is where these lenses work well in terms of practicality and cost. You could build a UHF version using lego bricks or some sort of dielectric fluid in a shaped container, but metal antennas rule below 1 GHz (answered this on another video sorry, reposting it here)
When I was in ECE back in college about a decade ago I was sitting with some friends talking with a guy trying to choose his engineering major. You got all the usual memes but everyone at the table agreed that the people studying RF were basically magicians.
I didn't understand a single word but was fascinated all the way through. Whatever was being discussed it looks and sounds very impressive
I hope part two will shed a bit more light on the practical applications of the technology
So I’m a woodworker and woodturner that likes watching metal turning, don’t know why it is what it is lol. I found you early on and you are brilliant and make me laugh. I’m lost here. I’m gonna keep watching, I want to support you and I might even learn something, but mix in some dumb people turning occasionally please and it’s all good 😂.
I do know some politicians I could interview, but that might be taking dumb a little too far! (sorry dudes, you know who you are!)
I do a bit of woodworking, but my wood lathe is looking a bit sad and lonely. I built a 30x10 ft sunroom from fresh sawn oak, that was a nice project. The roof has 3 tons of fine gravel as a heat store to prevent extremes of heat or cold. There's a lot of carpentry joints in that building. It has 6 x 8 inch roof beams with 2 inch square mortices snd hand cut trenails and wedges. It was a really fun build. I used to make a lot of furniture but I got sidetracked by metal and electromagnetic waves..
I work with microwaves professionally fun to see many familiar equipment .
Some nice PNA-X kit there, and those range extenders and trays full of gold things. Lovely
As an American i can confirm the intro is an accurate depiction of a regular city street. Good work
Buster Keaton was a visionary. It reminded me of a night out on Wind Street in Swansea, South Wales. Happy days
This is WAY over my head, but in no way does that mean this information isn't beyond fascinating!
I've shared this with my Dad, who's spent his entire life building hobby transceiver/antenna sets.
I built my first receiver in 1968 and my first transmitter in 1971, I've been messing about with this stuff for a long time! Say hello to your dad!
I love how transparent you were with the aid received making the video, integrity should never be for sale.
Great video, very interesting interview with the 3D printing company staff. Kept me glue to the screen the entire time.
As always, great, informative video. Thanks for shining some light on development of 3d printed RF stuff. This removes many limitations in designing such solutions, Now, limits are mostly imagination and laws of physics, not a manufacturing the idea.
I hope I'm getting slightly better with each video, but I'm never going to be polished and professional! So long as nobody cares about that, everything is golden. Over to the designers and engineers and deep thinkers now to see what they can come up with that I can't even begin to imagine
You've earned a new subscriber, very well done! This has unimaginably huge implications for the immediate future!
This reminds me of Falstad's old Wave Simulator java applets. When I was about to graduate HS I first saw those and his circuit simulator and that got me into electrical engineering in school.
OpenEMS is free software and it will run under Octave, you don't even need MATLAB. The program dumps E-field values and you can then feed that into Paraview for visualisation. It's a very useful tool. Not in the same league as HFSS and the other solver suites, but it's powerful.
Wow, a lot of new interesting RF stuff! Thx for sharing!
You’re so lucky! I’m so happy for you. Smashed the video as well 👏🏽👍🏽
This was my first ever trip to the USA, my first sponsored video, first time I'd used two cameras, first time I'd ever done an interview on camera, first time I'd used those Rode wireless mics and a lavalier, and only the second time I'd ever appeared on camera in a vid. I was in a flat panic all the time trying to remember everything I needed to do, so the fact that the video turned out at all is amazing. I just need to make some more vids now and learn how not to annoy all of the editing experts with my terrible editing skills. My welding is much worse though.
DAMN! The TECH that was developed here is mind-blowing! Looks like many man-centuries of work to get to this level.
That was extremely interesting and helped me understand how much I didn't know. Thanks m8.
Those folks at Rogers and Fortify were SO cool, they were stunningly nice to a total n00b like me and patiently answered all my daft questions. It was one h*ck of an experience all round
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Thanks for your quick response. They sound like a good mob. Keep well m8. I'll be watching. 🙂
This video is my introduction to your channel and I love it ❤ I am Blown away about these Rf lenses…
I was so impressed with the idea, that's why I asked Rogers Corporation for a sample of the material back in 2022!
Another brilliant video man, I am getting into generative design, and this makes me curious how I can better implement design constraints with a secondary function. Thank you for the video man!
it would certainly be interesting to let the basic Mikaelian profile iterate for a long time to see if the phase linearity or sidelobes or mass could be optimised.
This is really cool. It is great to hear about these tech breakthru's. Perhaps if more "Adverts" were as detailed as this I'd start watching them a bit more. Thanks.
This was a super fun video - well done on the sponsored delivery, all very up-front and great pacing. I admire your work here and now am going to have a dig through the rest of your content here. Keep up the great work!
I really have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, I'm hopeless at RUclips, video, audio, presentation and tidying up. Also terrible at TIG welding, but I have a load of fun messing about.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Clearly you're not hopeless - and if you used to be, it's time to update your self-image. You're kicking butt here, making fun, nerd-level videos that are clear yet chock-full of detail. I love it!!
@@RCTNT Yeah, beating myself up in public is a bit tired now. My wife of 37 years died 18 months ago and making RUclips vids was one of my ways to try to adapt to the grief and loss. Time heals, but bereavement after such a long time with someone really knocks the stuffing out of you. Things seem bright and full of wonder again now, so I'll be dialling back AIMEE's irritation with my failings. A little
@@MachiningandMicrowaves I'm so sorry for your loss. Most sincere condolences to you, fellow human. (Unrelated, AIMEE is hilarious, keep her around). Keep being awesome and my thoughts are with you.
It's neat seeing these new processes and products. Even if I don't really understand them.
When I first saw this material, I thought it would start something big. I'm doing a few 3D print dielectric lens projects later this year, but I think I'll stick to subtractive machining and electroforming. Talking of which, I'm working on a design that I'll need to electroform on a dissolvable aluminium mandrel for an upcoming video!
One of my favorite things to do on youtube is to find some topic I have no knowledge in, watch some videos, and try to get a general grasp. The information I gather is usually pretty useless by itself as it's often very surface level and I have no way to apply it, but I find it entertaining, so I do it anyway.
Even then I usually at the very least understand what the topic is, especially when it's about some scientific topic. I have a somewhat deeper, more academical knowledge of mathematics and physics.
This is one of those videos however where I go through and by the end I'm pretty much where I started. This stuff is so technical I basically have no idea what I've watched!
I promise to do an explainer when I get time!
@@MachiningandMicrowaves That'd be cool!
How am I only finding this channel now!!! Subbed 😁
I've not been very consistent about publishing videos, but now I've got things set up better for filming, sound and actually appearing on screen, I hope to put out much more regular vids. I'm hugely grateful to subscribers, as having a demonstrable audience really helps with getting collaborations and sponsorships. I would like to do some more expensive stuff but I need to pull in some income to invest in the channel. Many thanks for the sub!
Oh god, this brings back nightmares of RF engineering from my days at University. Went on to do electronic design and never did RF (well, not real RF). Wow, I'm impressed at how far this tech has come. Thanks.
I am more of an astrophysics/cosmology/quantum woo graduate. There's a huge amount of really interesting RF stuff going on these days
Brillient stuff a learning curve. Very informative ..thkyou for putting it out
Great video, looking forward to part 2
Coming soon! Well, fairly soon. I have some other videos due out, I want to get one published on Friday about how I made and planted a Russian WWII microwave bugging device at BBC Broadcasting House in central London for a prime-time BBC2 TV science/tech programme.
Thats awesome. Id love to try printing it!
If I ever get any spare time, I'm going to generate some gyroid lattice patterns and print then as decorative items
started watching this vid like: aw this is a very interesting little video on a subject i have little knowledge in, by a pretty cool entertaining guy. then 5:43 hits and I go cross-eyed by how over my head it was.
new sub keep it up!
Welcome aboard! Not all of my vids need supplementary oxygen, but I do tend to go into nerd mode now and then
Literally had no idea what was going on the entire video but it was cool to watch
Nice work
Love the new presentation style
It's a pragmatic solution for where I need to explain something but don't want to make loads of extra b-roll and animations that take forever to create. I needed a dedicated space for editing and macrophotography so I just made a spare bedroom into a recording space that isn't full of electronics, woodworking, machining, metal-casting and electroplating gear
Despite appearances to the contrary, I am crushingly shy and hate having my photo taken, so this is a terrifying experience! I can just about fake enough confidence to get through a scene now...
Well this is interesting.. I've been playing around with this for a good year with my printer. Nothing this advanced or complex. Absolutely awesome.
Sounds excellent. I hope you'll be able to share some results at some point, I hope to get some Zetamix Epsilon filament to try in my Prusa soon
What a fantastic film. Excellent work sir ! From a humble radio ham / old school telecoms tech chap!
Glad you enjoyed it! I certainly enjoyed making it, even though I'm terrible at camerawork, lighting, sound, editing, thumbmails, titles and tidying my room. (Neil - ex-K1NS, AA1EG, G4DBN when I'm at home!)
this is amazing, thanks for your efforts and sharing , its so interesting!
Very Cool, and good vid. Frequency stuff WELL above my pay grade. Keep up the good work.
Epic stuff, ladies and gentlemen.
From a brit soul stuck in america to a visitor, your brilliant mate.
Cheers! I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, but I'm having fun doing whatever it is. Oysters and Rhode Island beer in a bar on the edge of Boston Harbour was a highlight of that trip. I'll be back in CT in April. Must get to TX to see my chums in Houston and to all the other places I keep promising I'll go visit.
Fascinating! Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
❤ your sense of humour !
It's a reliable coping strategy in a world where dreadful stuff happens. Thanks for watching! Ultimately, I'm a storyteller, and there's a tradition of tale-telling in my ancestry that's been passed down to me. I'm fascinated by things and have a streak of 1950s humour that is ingrained. Something to do with being born in the fifties but missing out on almost every benefit of being a boomer by a few years. Laughter is the most obvious response, along with some good juicy techspeak obvs.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves ❤️ your videos, I worked with waveguides for my master’s thesis. My fellow students laughed at my “experiments in plumbing”
Really enjoyed that presentation. I would love to see the results of your moon scoping!
I hope to get another video out about that soon
Fantastic video. Finally yt sends something relevant.
I tend to get 3.5 tonne class tractor pulling videos in Dutch in my feed, mixed with ballet, baroque concerti grossi and hip-hop poetry slams, plus obviously the totally excellent Sleaford Mods. They are all fantastic. That algorithm knows exactly how to scratch my itch
I'm an EE with what I thought of as a pretty well rounded knowledge. Turns out I know less about RF than I thought!
Very interesting
I'm a ham radio operator and this is so cool.
I've had a ham licence since 1973, it's kept me fascinated with radio tech for 50 years so far
Thank you for the video, Neil! It was a pleasure having you at Fortify. It is clear that you are passionate about this application. I really enjoyed your video!
I had such a great experience, although I was in panic mode about getting everything filmed and recorded, thanks to everyone for being so NICE
@@MachiningandMicrowaves you worked hard to get it done and it was worth it!