Fiber guiding platform for mechanical splicer, optical connectors, fiber holder and methods

摘要

A three rod bundle confined inside a sleeve is constructed as a light guiding fiber mechanical splicing device which is stiff, strong and precise, with no moving parts. The design also applies to splicing fibers to pre-polished optical connectors through a built-in model of this innovative mechanical splicer. Applying the Soddy circles formula and using a bin approach assists in deriving the exact rod sizes needed and sleeve bore size to accommodate the three-rod bundle, so that this apparatus can be properly designed to guide any size of light guide fibers and studs with minimum clearance. Rods of varying diameters are sorted into bins and chosen based upon the aperture desired, thus eliminating the need for tight tolerance of the diameters of the three rods. This unique design allows for construction of a precision virtual hole of very long depth, which enables two optical fiber studs to butt against each other with a core to core misalignment of less than 1 um for single mode fiber optics cables. Unlike prior arts, the sleeve holding the rods eliminates the need for any clamping mechanism to tighten a loose bundle, which induces undesirable mechanical strain. It also eliminates the need to use a fiber clamp to force the fiber studs against dimensionally unstable V or U groove alignment features which also induce undesirable mechanical strain. A fiber holder is also presented to depict the usefulness of this invention on hold fiber in position.