How To Make Fiber Optics
Did you ever wonder how fiber optics is made? Surely you know it's made of glass or plastic, but you can't just utilize any kind of glass, or any kind of plastic for that matter. For example, if you were to make fiber optics from ordinary table glass, the light that you shine through it would have a difficult time travelling more than a few kilometers, how much more distances needed for long distance data transmission. This is because ordinary glass contains distortions, discolorations, and other impurities that would quickly absorb, reflect, or disperse light before it could travel any great distance. However, fiber optics is made from extremely pure glass without the impurities and distortions, which makes light travel very far distances.
The process of making fiber optic glass of the highest purity requires careful control the materials and processes involved. Basically, this involves creating the fiber optic heated glass or preform, drawing the optical fiber from preform, and testing the fiber optics.
Step 1. Creating the Fiber Optic Preform. A preform is a cylindrical glass blank that provides the source material from which glass fiber will be drawn in a single, continuous strand. Creating the preform includes a chemical process known as Modified Chemical Vapor Deposition (MCVD). This process involves bubbling oxygen through various chemical solutions to produce gas that is directed into a hollow, rotating tube made of synthetic silica or quartz.
A torch is shoved up and down the rotating tube, resulting in very high temperature that causes the gas to reach with oxygen to form silicon dioxide and germanium dioxide. These two chemicals combine together inside the rotating tube to make an extremely pure glass. Before the glass is cooled, this step needs a few hours.
Step 2. Drawing Optical Fiber from Preform. The finished glass preform is installed at the top of a tower which supports various devices used in the fiber drawing process. It begins by lowering one end of the perform into an in-line furnace, and as the lower end begins to melt, it forms a molten glob that is pulled quickly downward by gravity. Tracking behind the glob is a thin strand of glass that cools and solidifies quickly.
The glass is then loop through the remainder of the tool on the tower and lastly, the fiber is attached to a tractor mechanism. The tractor then pulls the glass strand from the preform and at the end of the run, the completed fiber is wound onto a spool.
Step 3. Testing the Fiber Optics. To determine the quality of the finished fiber, the completed fiber optics must undergo a number of tests that involves refractive index profile, fiber geometry inspection, tensile strength, and bandwidth capacity, attenuation at different wavelengths, chromatic dispersion, and operating temperature and humidity range.
These three steps ensure that the fiber optic cables sold in the market are of the highest quality and purity. But fiber optic cables are not enough to make a network. You will need fiber optic devices and transceivers like GLC SX MM and SFP mini GBIC to complete your networking needs. Be sure not to leave these behind.
Tags: fiber optic transceivers, fiber optics, GLC SX MM, SFP mini GBIC