3SAE's Ring of Fire® technology remains the industry standard for fusion splicing and optical fiber glass processing.
Prior to the development of 3SAE's patented Ring of Fire® splicing technology, standard fusion splicing tools were unable to accommodate the splicing of fibers larger than 600 microns. The three phase arc design behind Ring of Fire® technology expands the area plasma to accommodate fibers greater than 1 millimeter, twice that of a standard fusion splicer. Below is a brief introduction to Ring of Fire® technology and how it can be used to achieve efficient, high-strength fusion splicing for large diameter fiber & specialty optical fibers, including both multi-core fiber and hollow core fiber. This technology is available in many 3SAE products and supports applications from polyimide coating removal to creating fiber based tapers, end caps, mode field adapters (MFA’s), and optical combiners.
Independent Validation: The Scarnera Thesis
A 2020 doctoral thesis from the University of Southampton Optoelectronics Research Centre put 3-electrode Ring of Fire® and 2-electrode arc splicing head-to-head on the same fibers. Using refractive-index profilometry and S2 modal analysis at the splice, the study found the 3-electrode architecture produces a more symmetric index profile and holds modal content stable through repeated re-arcing, while the 2-electrode profile degrades. The work was sponsored by SPI Lasers, and the optimized splice it identified entered mass production on a 3-electrode FITEL platform.
Our executive technical brief summarizes the findings for engineers evaluating specialty splicing capital, with the cited thesis sections and the measured performance gap between the two architectures.
The full thesis is publicly available at DOI 10.5258/SOTON/D1215.
3SAE Technical Paper
High-power, Fused Assemblies Enabled by Advances in Fiber-Processing Technologies (© 2011 SPIE)
The power handling capabilities of fiber lasers are limited by the technologies available to fabricate and assemble the key optical system components. Previous tools for the assembly, tapering, and fusion of fiber laser elements have had drawbacks with regard to temperature range, alignment capability, assembly flexibility and surface contamination. To provide expanded capabilities for fiber laser assembly, a wide-area electrical plasma heat source was used in conjunction with an optimized image analysis method and a flexible alignment system, integrated according to mechatronic principles
3SAE Technical Paper
Large Area Isothermic Plasma for Large Diameter and Specialty Fiber Splicing (© 2007 OSA)
A device is presented that creates a large area plasma for splicing optical fibers. The isothermic thermal properties of the plasma facilitate splicing fibers >1mm in diameter without sacrificing splicing performance of standard fibers
