1050F Automated Fiber Aligner

The ability to align and couple single fibers to a test instrument pigtail is a fundamental requirement for optical fiber development, and manufacturing. Passive alignment devices that utilize ferrules or V-grooves to align the fibers are often sufficient. However, for other test applications, such as coupling a single-core instrument buffer fiber to each of the cores of a multicore fiber, or connecting two fibers that have different core arrangement or diameters than the pigtail, passive alignment devices are not appropriate. Like the other 1050 Series Fiber Aligners, the 1050F Fiber Aligner utilizes video profile alignment, the same reliable fiber alignment technique employed by most fusion splicers, to align fibers to the test instrument pigtail. Under the control of Photon Kinetics OTDR automation software, the 1050F is able to align and couple a single-core test instrument buffer fiber to each core of a multicore fiber. The 1050F can also be used to couple two fibers that have dissimilar cladding diameters. These unique alignment capabilities, combined with patented index matching oil application, enable the 1050F to couple fibers in just seconds, with both low optical loss and reflectance.