Abstract

Contamination originating in an electric resistance furnace was found to increase substantially the losses of unclad and plastic-clad silica fibers. In contrast, the losses of doped silica fibers with sufficient cladding thickness were unaffected by impure drawing conditions. Operating the furnace without muffle tube and protecting the preform with a pure, inert gas injected via a counter-flow resulted in practically contamination-free operation and unclad-fiber losses as low as 3 dB/km. The removal of the muffle tube significantly simplified the furnace operation and reduced the cycling time from many hours to a few minutes.

© 1977 Optical Society of America

Contamination of furnace-drawn silica fibers: comment

M. Brenci, P. F. Checcacci, R. Falciai, and A. M. Scheggi
Appl. Opt. 16(12) 3084-3084 (1977)

Detection of geometric perturbations in optical fibers

H. M. Presby
Appl. Opt. 16(3) 695-700 (1977)

Spatial power spectrum characteristics of the core diameter of furnace drawn and laser drawn step-index optical fibers

L. S. Watkins and P. H. Krawarik
Appl. Opt. 20(16) 2856-2860 (1981)

Laser Drawing of Optical Fibers

U. C. Paek
Appl. Opt. 13(6) 1383-1386 (1974)

Spectral losses of unclad vitreous silica and soda-lime-silicate fibers

P. Kaiser, A. R. Tynes, H. W. Astle, A. D. Pearson, W. G. French, R. E. Jaeger, and A. H. Cherin
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 63(9) 1141-1148 (1973)