I’m excited to share my project, LuneForge, an open-source tool currently in development that aims to simplify the design of Luneburg lenses specifically for radio frequency (RF) applications. Luneburg lenses are unique gradient-index lenses that focus RF signals effectively, making them valuable in various RF and antenna systems aimed for military and automotive industry.
Key Features:
Customizable Designs: Easily adjust parameters to tailor lens designs to specific RF needs.
User-Friendly Interface: Designed to be accessible for both RF professionals and hobbyists.
3D-Printing Optimization: Models are optimized for SLA 3D printing, ensuring precise and high-quality lenses.
Community-Driven: We’re building a community of RF enthusiasts and professionals to contribute, share knowledge, and push the boundaries of RF lens design.
I’d love to hear your feedback, suggestions, or ideas for new features. Feel free to check out the repository [ https://github.com/jboirazian/LuneForge ]
- As an antenna engineer myself, I'm always very glad to see tools and open source that make RF/microwave more accessible as a hobby!
That said, it'd be really great if this could simply be hosted/accessed online. The intersection of RF engineer/hobbyist and knowing how to work with Docker is slim (anywhere other than HN), which detracts from the "user friendly interface".
- To save anyone else a Google search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luneburg_lens
- Very interesting!
It would be even more appealing if you could show a test case where a high level metric (e.g., wifi download speed) improves with one of your lenses compared to a baseline scenario without lense.
Also, I expect the dielectric properties of the printing material will affect the design.
Which printing material have you tested exactly?
Do you know how much the performance changes when cheaper alternatives is used?
- None of the parameters have units. Is this meters, feet, inches, wavelength? I'm sure you've done a lot of work, but it's not impedance matched to the user.
How many wavelengths diameter are required for this to work?
For example, how big would a lens have to be to work at 902-928 Mhz for LoraWAN?
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- Nice work! I look forward to following your development. As a radio amateur I was looking at a Luneburg lens for a 10GHz point to point link, with luck this will let me play around with that idea. Is there a discord server or forum where folks are discussing applications?
- You say this is open source but I don't see a license on it. Did you mean source available?
- You say it's optimized for SLA, could it work with FDM? I haven't looked up the dialectic constants for PLA or PETG, but I'm very curious.
- By SLA, does it mean resin printing then using some kind of metal coating process?
Or could you use something like SLS/SLM to print the whole model in metal?
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- Could this be used to make the wifi in my home do right angles and avoid walls? how big would it have to be?
- How do you 3d print conductors?