Preparation of Fiber Ends for Fusion Splicing
The preparation process before inserting the open fiber ends into the splicer is very important. Optical fibers must have their primary coating removed, must be cleaned properly and must have their end faces cleaved to a best possible plane and to fiber axis perpendicular surface.
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A fiber is ready
to be cleaved
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Cleaving of optical fibers involves several processes
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The fiber is inserted into the cleaver after being cleaned with IPA
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The cleave process is done through a combined movement of scratching and breaking
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Both fiber ends can be now inserted into the splicer and are ready to be spliced together
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An end face with
<0.3° cleave angle
under interferometer
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The fiber's end face quality affects the final splice result
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It’s the law of the physic: the better and cleaner the fiber end faces are, the lower is the splice loss that can be achieved
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A splicer can compensate missing glass material caused by high cleave angles or bad end face but the core is likely to be affected especially on single-mode fibers
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Special cleavers using diamond blade can achieve cleave angle less than 0.35° compared to their hard-metal wheel only counter parts
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Being aware of these high requirement, Corning fiber optic cleavers are designed to give consistently best possible cleave result... > More
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