A new, automated system from Arden Photonics has been developed to make measurement of fibre coatings simpler.
The FGC-P is a fully automated system for directly measuring the geometry of optical fibre coatings. Able to measure fibres with coating diameters from 100 µm to 260 µm, the user-friendly system can produce reliable, accurate measurements in production and R&D environments.
Parameters that can be measured include coating diameter, coating non-circularity and coating-cladding concentricity in standard telecom fibres as well as in specialty products such as polarization maintaining fibres. The novel liquid cell enables it to handle thin fibres with dimensions down to 60µm cladding / 100µm coating, and layer thicknesses as small as 10µm.
Standard cells are available for fibres with nominal coating thicknesses of 245, 200 and 100µm coating diameter, while the cell can be modified on customer request to accommodate non-standard coating diameters.
The FGC-P is configured to measure dual-layer coatings - useful for many standard and specialty fibres - and is standards compliant, using the side-view reference test method set out in IEC-60793-1-21.