Drawing of Specialty Fibers

Typical parameters are:

• fiber diameter:                                                  70 - 10000 µm
• preform stretching to rods and capillaries:           1 - 5 mm
  
• maximal preform diameter:                                30 mm
• temperature range for soft glass drawing:            200 - 1000 °C
• temperature range for silica glass drawing:          900 - 2200 °C
  
  

Specialized devices for functionalized fiber coatings

Multifunctional gravity coating systems allow to cover the bare fibers with different polymers. They are designed for various fiber diameters and different coating thicknesses. The coating thickness is tunable between 3 and up to 100 µm. Fibers are coated in a single step or by the double coating method (wet-on-dry process).

Curing: Optical fiber coatings are very different in their curing and polymerisation conditions. Two approaches are applied dependent on the chemical precursors: thermal and UV photochemical curing. UV curing is possible using different radiation sources (H-bulb, D-bulb) and power densities.