Proper Polishing Fixtures Care for Optical Fiber Polishing Machines

The most critical step to assure high-quality assemblies that meet specifications is perhaps the polishing process in fiber optic cable assembly. That’s why selecting the right optical fiber polishing machine, fiber polishing film, and polishing fixtures are important in meeting your needs. To produce different connector styles, it’s likely that you have several polishing fixtures based on your cable assembly house product offerings.

To your company, the quality of the polishing fixtures is extremely important. To produce a high volume of products with minimal quality issues over the long run, your company will want to maintain these tools considering the high cost of production components and equipment.

For fiber optic polishing, there is a typical fiber polisher. To polish the end faces of fiber optic products, Fiber Optic Polishing Machines are used to minimize signal losses due to scattering. By providing rapid polishing of many different connector styles, Polishing machines can increase productivity.

Proper maintenance of polishing fixtures is essential

With high-precision machining equipment, fiber polishing epoxy fixtures for optical fiber polishing machines are built. Negatively impacting your product quality and polishing process, Fixtures made of aluminum and steel can warp and flex over time. Polishing fixtures made of hardened stainless steel avoid this wear effect on the other hand. However, the risk of rusting is not increased by this as hardened stainless steel contains more iron in the alloy. This is why proper maintenance is very essential.

Onto the polishing fixture with a plastic clamp or latch, the most common fiber optic connectors are locked in addition, which can wear over time if not properly cleaned. The functionality of the polishing machine and product quality are significantly affected by this.

Proper maintenance is very crucial as polishing fixtures are costly. For a long time, you can use your polishing fixtures with daily maintenance with no variation in your fiber optic cable assemblies’ quality level.

For monitoring the quality of your polishing fixture and fiber polishing liquid, an excellent way is to monitor the end-face geometries of polished ferrules. In end-face geometry parameters, any significant deficiencies in the fixture will be reflected.

Various Types of Optical Fiber Fusion Splicer

The process of joining two fibers together permanently is Fiber splicing with fusion splicer. Fusion and mechanical splicing are two fiber splicing types.

Two optical fibers are not fused physically in Mechanical splicing, rather inside a sleeve, two fibers are held butt-to-butt with some mechanical mechanism. You will get back reflection and worse insertion loss in mechanical splices as compared to infusion splices. For fiber testing and emergency repairs, Mechanical splicing is mostly used.  

The second type of splicing is called Fusion splicing. By an electric arc, two fibers are welded (fused) together in fusion splicing. As it provides for virtually no back reflection and the lowest insertion loss, Fusion splicing is the most widely used splicing method. The most reliable joint between two fibers is offered by Fusion splicing. Fusion splicing is done with an automatic machine called a fusion splicer.

Fusion splicer

As we said above, the machine used to weld (fuse) two optical fibers together is a fusion splicer. Fusion splicing is the other name for this process. In alignment fixtures, the fiber ends are placed, cleaved, and prepared on the fusion splicer from the fiber tool kit. The fiber ends are brought together after being heated with electrodes and fused at the press of a button.

Fusion splicers are automatic machines that you need to either set the splicing parameters yourself or choose factory recommended settings.

Core alignment

To inspect the two cleaved fibers, Optical fiber core alignment fusion splicers use multiple cameras before fusing. Multiple axis movement of the fibers is allowed by them.

Allowing users to store separate recipes or programs, Core alignment splicers are high-end units where factors such as temperature and splice time can be customized highly. Such high-end fusion splicers visually display the splice after magnifying it, and to line up the fibers, they use active core alignment.

Resulting in a typical splice loss of only 0.02dB, this provides for precise fiber alignment. For all single-mode fiber applications, this level of precision is required and the performance of multimode fiber is also enhanced. Core alignment is usually used by Ribbon splicers. The fiber cleaner is also useful.

Optical Fiber Fusion Splicing and its Benefits

Optical fiber fusion splicing

Optical fiber fusion splicing is a welded joint that is formed between two optical fibers. Compared with another temporary joint such as a mechanical splice fiber splicer is a permanent, low-loss, high-strength joint. In the optical network, optical fiber fusion splices play a crucial role.

Fusion Splicing Process

The main goal is to create a joint with minimum insertion loss yet with mechanical strength and long-term reliability that matches well with the fiber itself.

The ideal process needs to be fast, inexpensive and it should not need expensive equipment. But in reality, among different applications and requirements, the process requires trade-offs. For example, long-term reliability is the most important goal for a fiber stripper and undersea telecommunications.

The Benefits

For interconnecting fibers such as fiber optic connectors and mechanical splicing, there are other approaches too. Compared to these two, fusion splicing has many benefits as explained below.

It provides the lowest insertion loss

It can even withstand extremely high temperature changes

It is one with the Lowest back reflection (optical return loss ORL)

It is very compact

Quite Permanent

It also prevents dust and other contaminants from entering the optical path

Provides Highest mechanical strength

The major steps involved in the process of fusion splicing can be summarized as the following.

• Optical fiber stripping
• Fiber cleaving
• Fiber alignment
• Fiber welding
• Insertion loss estimation
• Pull tension strength testing
• Splice protection with fusion splice sleeve

What are the Different Splicing Types?

In three types fusion splicing environment and applications can be roughly divided:

• Field splicing
• Factory splicing
• Laboratory splicing

The assembly of undersea fiber cables aboard fiber deployment ships is a very important example of field splicing. One example of factory splicing could be the assembly of fiber optic passive devices such as a WDM. An example of laboratory splicing is performed by researchers by fusion splicing the newest developed fibers so that they can test their compatibility with the existing industry-standard fibers.

Fiber fusion splicing includes various concepts and fiber tool kit from many subjects including mechanical engineering, heat transfer, material science, optical waveguide theory, fluid mechanics, and more.

Get to Know About Polishing of Fiber Optic Connector

Failure of the component or failure of the whole system can be caused by any contamination in the fiber connection. An important component in fiber connection is the Fiber optic connector. As we know, end-surface treatment is required by fiber optic cables for proper light transmission. For almost all glass-based fibers, Polishing and fiber polishing pad is an essential step with diameters and cladding larger than 200 microns. Polishing is also needed by all fiber optic connectors.

Why Polishing is needed by Fiber Optic Connector?

What the connector return loss will be determined by the connector end-face preparation will determine once the fiber optic cable is terminated with a particular connector. Through the light reflected into the light source and the connector in the forward direction by the connector surface, the back reflection is the ratio between the light propagation.

Utilizing narrow linewidth sources such as DFB lasers, minimizing the back reflection is very important in analog and high-speed fiber-optic links, which are prone to mode fluctuations and hopping in their output. To make fiber optic connectors work perfectly, Polishing and fiber polishing film is one of the essential procedures. That’s why we need polishing of fiber optic connector.

Ways of Polishing Fiber Connector

On the fiber connectors, there are several different polish options. Due to the extreme accuracy requirement of today’s fiber connections especially for production polishing is mostly performed by a machine.

For all types of fiber optic connectors, the common machine polishing tools, such as other fiber optic polishing machine kits and fiber optic polishing machines as well as fiber polishing fixtures are used. Fiber optic polishing puck and Polishing paper or some cleanser are needed by the manual fiber optic connector polishing.

Conclusion

As it is an art, Fiber polishing and fiber polishing epoxy is as much a science. Proper polishing of fiber optic polishing is critical for optimum results to a certain extent. However, on your technique or your polishing machine, it also depends. So, for your polishing tool and fiber optic connector, selecting the right company or the right machine is essential.

All about Fiber-Optic Interferometry Technology

Optical fiber interferometer has been developed for over a hundred years and is used as precision metrology that is widely used in the optical system for extremely accurate measurements for a variety of physical quantities in laboratories as well as in industry fields. The base of optical interferometry technology lies in the interference of light beams that are launched from another monochromatic source, same light source, or laser source. It propagates through space or dielectric mediums such as glass waveguides with different optical paths. It then arrives simultaneously at a point in space or on the surface of an object. Hence the light intensity will differ periodically with the optical path difference, which is the optical phase difference, between the beams. This is a much-known process of light interference.

In the wavelength scale of the optical light source, a very small change in the optical path difference can induce an obvious and measurable change in the intensity of the interference light. So, by measuring the changes of interference light intensity, one can obtain information regarding the changes of optical paths in an optical measurement system. The optical interferometer is built as an instrument due to this mechanism and for accurate measurements of many physical quantities, such as the displacement, velocity, and distance, as well as for tests of optical systems it is widely used.

Optical interferometry technology has made great progress due to huge developments of laser and fiber optic technologies and has also evolved from classical bulk optics to fiber optics. Applications of the optical interferometers have been expanded to areas such as underwater acoustic detections, voltage and current measurements inside electric power systems, and biomedical pressure monitoring in living bodies but everything depends on fiber-optic technologies.

One major application of the optical interferometer is that it is used as the optical interferometer sensor for the detection of unknown and uncontrolled physical parameters. Fiber-optic-based interferometers use optical fibers as sensor light carriers. From fiber-connected transducers or directly from fibers it obtains the detection information.

In general, the preparation of optical power meters and fiber-optic transducers/sensors is done from totally dielectric materials that are chemically inert and completely immune to electromagnetic interference (EMI).

Knowing about Working of Fiber Optic Fiber Stripper

Using an electric arc to form a single long fiber by melting two optical fibers together at their end faces, a fiber optic fusion splicer is a device. The two glass fibers are joined end to end by the fusion splice or resulting joint so that from one fiber into the other, optical light signals can pass with very little loss.

Working of a fusion splicer

They need to be carefully stripped of their outer polymer jackets and coating, thoroughly cleaned, and then precisely cleaved to form perpendicular, smooth end faces before optical fibers can be fusion-spliced successfully. Each fiber is placed into a holder in the splicer’s enclosure once all of this has been completed. From this point on, the rest of the process is taken over by the fiber optic fusion splicer, which involves 3 steps:

Impurity Burn-Off: You can never be too clean when it comes to fusion splicing as the slightest trace of other impurities or dust can wreak havoc on a splice’s ability to transmit optical signals. Many fusion splicers incorporate an extra precautionary cleaning step into the process even though fibers are hand-cleaned before being inserted into the splicing device: they generate a small spark between the fiber ends before fusing to burn off any remaining dust or moisture. fiber stripper is also useful.

Alignment: to the fibers’ positions, the fusion splicer makes minute adjustments using precise and small, motors until they’re properly aligned. The fiber optic technician can view the fiber alignment during the alignment process, thanks to magnification by optical viewing scope, video camera, or power meter.

Fusion: It’s time to fuse the fiber's ends to form a permanent splice after any remaining dust and moisture have been burned off and fibers have been properly positioned. Melting the optical fiber end-faces without causing the molten glass core and fibers’ cladding to run together, the splicer emits a larger spark. Forming the final fusion splice, the melted fiber tips are then joined together. With most fiber fusion splices showing a typical optical loss of 0.1 dB or less, estimated splice-loss tests are then performed. You can buy a fiber tool kit.

Different Types of Mechanical Splicing

If light travels in a fiber splicer, then it needs a continuous, non-disruptive path so that it can travel a long distance that too without any big signal loss. There comes the requirement for light signals to be amplified, cross-connected, added, or dropped in a radius of hundreds of kilometers fiber link. As a standard practice, two fibers are connected in these types of connections. You can perform this connection with the help of connectors and splicing.

Compared to multimode fibers, single-mode fiber needs much higher tolerances for the process of splicing to be accomplished. Compared to multimode fiber mechanical splicing, single-mode fiber mechanical splicing is more costly.

Splicing is the process in which without any use of connectors two fibers are joined together. There exist two types of fiber: fusion splicing and mechanical splicing. Splicing needs to be done during installation or repair.

When compared to connectors, fiber cleaner has lower loss and better mechanical integrity. But connectors help make system configuration much more flexible. So, in outdoor applications to connect fiber cables, there is the use of splices.

Different Types of mechanical splicing

Ribbon V-Groove type

Capillary type doesn't work anymore for multiple fiber cables such as ribbon fibers. Fiber ribbon is placed in a V-shaped groove array, with each fiber place in its v-groove. In this V-groove array, two ribbon fibers are put together, and then on the top, a cover plate is applied. In multi fiber splicing, this V-groove splice is very much useful.

Capillary type

In capillary type mechanical splicing, into a thin capillary tube, there is the insertion of two fibers. The tube has an inner diameter that is then matched with the fiber's cladding diameter. Then there is pushing of these two

fiber ends towards inwards till they meet. In lowering the back reflections index matching gels are inserted in the center. With the help of compression or friction, these fibers are held in place.

Elastomeric type

Elastomeric splice is specifically designed for lab testing or emergency fiber repairs. At first, into the hole an index matching gel is injected, then there is the insertion of one fiber stripper till it reaches about halfway. Then from the other end, another fiber is inserted till it meets the first one.