Products & Platforms: Bundle Fiber Draw Tower

AEi’s Bundle Draw Tower draws fibers and lays them out on the face of a large 2.5 meter or 3 meter drum in bundles of 10,000 or more fibers. These bundles are later pulled off the drum and cut to lengths as needed to make fiber light guides. The light guides are used for illumination purposes in machine vision, medical devices such as endoscopes, and for signage.

Application Examples:

• Drawing optical fiber bundles for machine vision illumination
• Drawing optical fiber bundles for medical illumination
• Drawing optical fiber bundles for signage

Processes & Tools:

• Fiber Drawing

Features & Benefits:

• Fiber feed protective nose to support drawing smaller fibers without breakage for improved light throughput
• Support for drawing up to 4 preforms simultaneously for increased production capacity
• Rigid and robust upper tower structure for improved product uniformity
• Remote diagnostics and service options for best equipment up-time
• FlexAuto PC-based control with configurable product recipes

To make the exact quantities needed of different sizes and types of fiber bundles during a given shift, PC-based control and associated flexible control software is utilized to minimize work in process and reduce customer delivery time. The control software also provides configurable product recipes so new product types can be quickly and easily introduced into production. An example of this is fiber light guides using smaller diameter fibers which allow for greater packing densities and hence a greater light throughput a superior product. Making these smaller diameter fibers is are also made possible by the protective nose structure for fiber feeding inherent to this draw tower’s design. The nose structure shields the drawn fiber from turbulent airflows due to the high speed of the drum so smaller diameter fibers can be drawn without the fibers breaking during the drawing process.