Construction of an RPC using additive manufacturing technology

Abstract

In this work, we report the progress in the design and construction of an RPC detector fully built using additive manufacturing technology, an emerging/interdisciplinary engineering domain only partially utilized in HEP. Our novel design of the 3D detector stack can be automatically and fully constructed in a short time, ensuring repeatability and accuracy, while minimizing construction mistakes. 3D printing, applied to instrumentation for physics enhances detector performance and capabilities, cutting construction costs and improving standardization over large-scale productions. The delivered detector constitutes a new generation of RPC detectors, electrically equivalent to the existing ones but mechanically better and standardized according to the prescribed specifications. We aim at proving the feasibility studies of a 3D printed detector that features state-of-art performance, at a fraction of the cost and potentially constructed without the need of external industrial partners.