Splicing of Polarization Maintained (PANDA) Optical Fibers in an Electronics Manufacturing Environment

Optoelectronics technology has been undergoing continuous improvement in order to accommodate customer demand for smaller, faster and cheaper products [1]. The demand is satisfied by using novel material fibers, design techniques and processes. This results in challenges for the handling and usage of fibers during the assembly process. The focus of this research endeavor is restricted to the splicing processes of Polarization Maintaining (PM) fibers during optoelectronic assembly. Until recently, the technology of transmitting higher rate of data was limited to laboratories. However, the manufacturing technology was not standard. It took a longer period of time for the commercialization of these products. Due to the market driven demand and shorter product launch times, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) decided to outsource the manufacturing of fiber optics products to the Electronics Manufacturing Service (EMS) providers. This paper focuses on the splicing of Panda fibers in an EMS provider’s manufacturing environment. The objective of the study was to develop the splicing process for Panda fibers and outline the splicing parameters that have a significant impact on obtaining low loss splices. A ‘design of experiments’ approach has been used to perform the splices along with a real time splice loss measurement using a power meter and source. Prefuse power, prefuse time, arc power and arc time were the factors selected for experimentation. Experiments have been conducted using the aforementioned parameters and the ‘best’ combination was used to perform a verification run. An effort has been made to obtain (near) optimal values for the significant parameters that can be used for production in an EMS provider’s environment.