In recent years, traditional machine elements have been enhanced with new capabilities through the integration of sensors. One of the core components of machines are couplings. To transform couplings into "smart" machine elements, sensor integration is necessary. Due to the requirement for high deformation in the built-in sensors, a dielectric elastomer sensor (DES) concept was implemented in a deformable elastic ring gear. In this work, we present the manufacturing process and layout of stacked multi-layer capacitive strain sensor (ML-DES), in the form of an electric multi-layer capacitor. The ML-DES design includes an elastomeric substrate with alternating layers of silicone-based conductive ink as capacitor plates, and an elastomeric film as dielectric and electrical insulation. To assess the stacking process, various thin ML-DESs with four electrode layers were fabricated and tested using a tensile testing machine and an LCR meter. The study reveals that the viscoelasticity of the dielectric elastomer material impacts the behavior of capacitance change. Comparing stacked and non-stacked sensors, it was observed that the capacitance change of the stacked sensor is more stable.