Fujikura Europe, a manufacturer of fibre optic cables and equipment, has enhanced its LazerMaster and ArcMaster series, for use in the biomedical and research industries. Alongside this release the company has also announced new services centred around its optimised splicing technology.
Fujikura’s splicing technology uses high-end CO₂ laser heating systems, to enable cleaner splicing with no contamination, no electrodes for low maintenance costs. Alongside the new products Fujikura will also be providing engineering and optimisation services in specialty splicing for fibre preparation applications. These include custom hardware or software design, process improvement consultation and advanced splicer training.
Fujikura’s new products for biomedical industries have a power stability feature which improves laser output enabling a more repeatable process. With an integrated closed-loop feedback system and real-time measurement function, both splice loss and peak-to-peak taper ripple are also reduced. Many types of optical fibre terminal processing can be completed using Fujikura’s fusion splicing equipment, including stripping, cutting and splicing processing necessary for the manufacture of such medical applications.
Fujikura’s major products immediately available for the biomedical industries include:
The ArcMaster series consists of a ‘Split V-Groove’ fibre clamping system which accommodates optical fibre ranges from 60 to 1200 µm for cladding without changing v-grooves or fibre clamps. The ‘Plasma Zone’ fibre positioning system incorporates multiple fibre and electrode positioning techniques to provide versatility for splicing LDF, heat sensitive or small diameter fibres. The Fujikura PCS-100 (Polyimide Fibre Coating Stripper) offers splicing technology that uses mechanical stripping methods. Polyimide based optical fibres are used in the oil, gas and medical industries as they provide superior heat and chemical resistance to conventional UV curable coating material.
The LazerMaster series is a customised CO₂ laser splicing and glass processing system. It uses a Warm Tapering Imaging (WTI) monitoring system for precise control of heating power. The WTI brightness level is captured in real time during the tapering and the value is used to adjust the CO₂ laser output power to a level appropriate for the decreasing mass of a fibre as it is tapered to a smaller diameter. The LazerMaster also has specially designed onboard firmware enabling operations to be performed automatically, manually or remotely through a PC. It has large diameter fibre splicing capabilities up to 2.3mm and long tapering capabilities up to 150mm and beam size and shape can be customised to meet specific requirements to enable it to be used in fused glass component development and mass scale production.