As optical fibre is now
manufactured to very high standards, the core is consistently
central within the cladding (a low concentricity error).
A cladding alignment splicer relies on the concentricity
of the fibre core to achieve core alignment. Instead of
using mechanical adjusters to align the fibres, fixed
alignment machines use a precision ceramic V-block to
provide cladding alignment. The fixed V-grooves align
fibres to within 1 µm.
As the arc fires the fibres become molten and are then
pushed together. To overcome any misalignment problems
a fixed alignment splicer uses a long arc time to allow
the surface tension effect of the molten glass to bring
the fibres into perfect alignment. Using a reciprocating
technique called wiggle can accelerate
this process.
In ribbon fibre between
4 and 16 primary coated fibres are laid side-by-side and
sandwiched between two layers of tape. Various network
suppliers around the world use ribbon fibre. Hence, the
ribbon splicer is a multifibre version of the fixed alignment
splicer. There is a precision v-block with between 4 and
16 v-grooves providing cladding alignment. All fibres
are spliced at once using an offset arc.
