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64 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2021 3D printing has been around for many years and, as time has progressed, so has this tech- nology. However, one aspect of 3D printing seems to have not been developed as much until recently. at aspect is related to the materials which are used for 3D printing and, specifically, materials which are compatible with RF or high-speed digital (HSD) applica- tions. ere are many materials that can be used for 3D printing, but until recently, none of these had properties which were conducive to printing circuits with good RF or HSD per- formance. Rogers recently released the first 3D printable material for digital light processing (DLP) and stereolithography (SLA) 3D print- ing, which has good properties for RF and HSD circuit considerations. ere are several different types of 3D print- ing technology and depending on the tech- nology, there are different types of materials which can be used for printing. We teamed up with Fortify, a leading DLP printing platform for filled and reinforced photopolymer materi- als, to enable the manufacture of the new, high- performance material. For photopolymer 3D printing processes like DLP and SLA printing, the materials that have been historically used have a high dissipation factor (Df ), a dielectric constant (Dk) that is not well controlled, and some of these materials have a high moisture absorption property. Table 1 has information that can be used for comparison between the traditional 3D printed materials and these new high performance 3D printable materials. As shown in Table 1, most of these materials have very similar Dk values when tested at 10 GHz. What is not obvious is how consistent these Dk values are for potential Dk variation within a small area or Dk variations within a batch or variations within batch-to-batch. Rogers formu- lated low loss, high-performance circuit materi- als over the past five decades and now extends this expertise for consistent RF performance in DLP and SLA 3D printing processes. No matter how well the electrical proper- ties are controlled, if the moisture absorption High-Performance 3D Printed Circuitry Lightning Speed Laminates by John Coonrod, ROGERS CORPORATION Table 1: This information can be used for comparison between the traditional 3D printed materials and the new, high-performance 3D printable materials from Rogers.