Arc Power Calibration for Fusion Splicing Optical Fibers with Variety Diameters

A novel arc calibration method has been developed for fusion splicing optical fibers with a large variety of glass diameters. This method heats the fiber with multiple short arcs and measures the amount of meltback at the corner of the fiber-ends. The fiber corner melting speed is found to be proportional to the fiber temperature. By varying the arc power of the multiple arcs, we can determine the desired arc power and appropriate melting speed for the tested fiber. This method has tested to be consistent and accurate using a newly released splicer with a controllable plasma zone. The splicer can automatically select the correct arc power for various fiber glass diameters. It enables the optimized splice parameters to be easily transferred to multiple splicers in production lines, resulting in consistent, high quality splice results.