Dr. Raymond Rumpf Motivates AMTA 2025 Audience with Keynote on Additive Manufacturing and Antenna Innovation
The 2025 Antenna Measurement Techniques Association (AMTA) Conference is underway in Tucson, Arizona, bringing together the global community of engineers, researchers, and innovators focused on antenna measurement and characterization.
Dr. Raymond C. Rumpf, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Kraetonics LLC, delivered thea keynote address that both inspired and challenged attendees to rethink what’s possible in electromagnetics and additive manufacturing.
A Keynote That Captured the Spirit of Innovation
With humor and candor, Rumpf described the realities of pursuing high-risk, high-reward research—the technical challenges, the difficulty of securing funding for high-risk ideas, and the tenacity required to push through both.
“The purpose of this talk,” Dr. Rumpf told attendees, “is not to encourage or discourage the most ambitious research, but to motivate all types of research and help people get through the struggles using humor, humility and dedication.”
The talk offered a rare combination of technical depth and personal insight. Dr. Rumpf highlighted projects from his research team and Kraetonics that demonstrate how additive manufacturing is reshaping the future of antenna design and electromagnetics—from 3D printed volumetric antennas to devices that may approach or exceed fundamental performance limits.
Breakthrough Ideas Driving Practical Solutions
Central to the keynote was the concept of Preservational Spatially-Variant Lattices (PSVLs)—a breakthrough design method that allows periodic electromagnetic structures like metamaterials or photonic crystals to be bent, twisted, conformed, or otherwise varied spatially without losing their electromagnetic properties.
This innovation supports the growing demand for conformal arrays in defense and aerospace applications, where surfaces are typically irregular or doubly curved. Wrapping arrays over such surfaces while maintaining the size, shape, and spacing of the elements in arrays is very challenging.
Dr. Rumpf also discussed how his team’s work on 3D volumetric circuits and hybrid additive manufacturing has evolved into practical design and fabrication tools through Kraetonics’ flagship product line, OmniSlice®™ , OmniWrap™ and OmniSuite™.
Kraetonics at the Forefront of Additive Manufacturing for RF Systems
Through its advanced software and research collaborations, Kraetonics is helping engineers and scientists unlock the next generation of antenna and electromagnetic design capabilities. The company’s technology enables:
- Multi-material and functionally graded materials manufacturing, integrating conductors and dielectrics in a single print.
- Off-axis and conformal printing, expanding geometric freedom for complex electromagnetic structures and printing structures without requires supports.
- Design-to-build automation, streamlining workflows from CAD model to printed component.
- Improved SWaP (size, weight, and power) performance across defense and aerospace communication systems.
These innovations are directly aligned with the AMTA’s vision of promoting knowledge in electromagnetic measurements to enrich global technologies and scientific progress. As devices evolve to exploit the new degrees of freedom offered by additive manufacturing, Kraetonics’ tools are helping to make design and manufacturing easy for the user.
Continuing Conversations at AMTA 2025
Visitors to Booth #208 can meet with Dr. Rumpf, and Kraetonics CEO Christopher Stricklan to learn more about how OmniSlice’s capabilities and how it’s Kraetonics’ flagship platform, OmniSlice™, transforms traditional 3-axis printers into multi-material, off-axis systems capable of printing functionally– graded materials and volumetric circuits—enabling new frontiers in antenna and RF device manufacturing.
The company’s active participation as both sponsor and exhibitor underscores its commitment to supporting collaboration and knowledge exchange within the antenna measurement community.