Suspended Stripline - Production Process

OUR PROCESS

DESIGN

Plexsa has chosen to perform the entire design and production processes in-house in order to ensure the quality of our products. This has allowed us to be innovative in shaping these processes to our specific needs, leading to unsurpassed accuracy and reliability. As a result our products constantly push the limits of what is possible with suspended substrate stripline technology. We make use of Empire XPU, a 3D EM Solver which in our 25+ years of experience has been the most accurate and efficient tool for broadband high frequency design simulation

SUSPENDED SUBSTRATE STRIPLINE

We exclusively use suspended stripline technology for our products due to the numerous advantages thereof, compared to other implementations:

More compact and lighter than waveguide and coaxial machined structures

Convenient, low-loss transition to most equipment and systems through coaxial connectors

Lower dielectric losses than microstrip or stripline Uniform fields, unlike the inhomogeneous waves in microstrip that result in dispersion and less control over impedance

Suitable for high frequency and broadband, unlike lumped element implementation

Higher Q than microstrip and stripline

Faster assembly and higher accuracy than lumped element

CNC MILLING

Our cavities are CNC milled by Fanuc Robodrills which, combined with dynamic milling, allows us to machine to repeatable high accuracy. This enables a high production yield and supports repeatable, accurate final products. The cavities are milled from aluminium and plated with silver to raise the Q as well as protect against possible oxidation.

ETCHING

Our etching process yields artworks with track sizes conforming to extremely stringent tolerances. This tight margin allows greater design options, repeatable production, and accurate products. Artworks are etched from Rogers, Taconic, and Panasonic material of various thicknesses, depending on the product.

ASSEMBLY

Assembly is performed by hand and with use of a microscope, with each product’s constituents and design being good enough for us to never make use of tuning screws. This speeds up the assembly process significantly, yielding repeatable, reliable, and cost-effective products.

TESTING

All our products are tested during assembly before and after ageing. After sealing they are tested again to ensure temperature stability and then finally an in-depth Acceptance Test Result sheet is filled in for each product before shipping. If required, they are also tested at -55°C and +85°C. We use Keysight, Copper Mountain, and Anritsu Vector Network Analysers covering DC to 70 GHz, and ensure that our equipment is always properly calibrated and serviced.