EANT GmbH 3D Printed Metal Replacement for Antenna Mounts

The Challenge

EANT was engaged by a partner company, EPAK, a maker of maritime satellite antennas, to improve the design of the antenna support mounts. These are usually welded structures comprising multiple stainless-steel components, resulting in a heavy assembly. The goal was to amend the design to make it lighter, as well as easier and faster to produce. To achieve this, engineers used generative design, which minimizes a part’s material needs while maintaining its structural requirements. However, this approach usually produces organic shapes that are difficult, if not impossible, to fabricate with machining and welding. 

Solution

At the suggestion of CINTEG AG, a 3D printing services and solutions provider, engineers chose additive manufacturing (AM) as the optimal solution because it offered several significant benefits over other fabrication methods: 

• AM easily achieves the irregular shape produced by the generative design 

• Multiple polymer materials are available that are lighter than metal but meet structural requirements 

• AM offers a faster means of fabrication 

• AM requires much less labor to produce the mount 

Engineers selected FDM® Nylon 12CF, a carbon-fiber material that results in very strong, rigid structures. A Stratasys F900® 3D printer, which has the largest build chamber among industrial 3D printers, afforded sufficient space to accommodate the part’s size. A T40 printer tip was also essential to this solution because it enabled a higher volume of material deposition during the print process, accelerating the print time and reducing time-to-part.