Ofs Fitel, LLC

Eric L Barish

Fengqing Wu

Joseph P Fletcher, Iii

Joseph P Fletcher Iii

Core rod sections useable for production of finished optical fiber preforms are fabricated by inserting one or more core body pieces axially end-to-end inside a glass cylinder, thereby defining joints between adjacent ones of the inserted pieces. The cylinder is mounted with the contained core body pieces in the region of a furnace. The glass cylinder and core body pieces are heated together in the furnace, thereby elongating the cylinder and the core body pieces contained in the cylinder, and the cylinder collapses to form a finished core rod. Core rod sections are cut from the finished core rod at positions that coincide with the joints between the core body pieces. One or more of the cut core rod sections are useable for the production of optical fiber preforms.

Increasing the cladding-to-core ratio (D/d) of low D/d core rods in optical fiber preforms

An optical fiber preform is fabricated by inserting a number of core body pieces end-to-end inside a glass cylinder, wherein the pieces may have a cladding-to-core diameter (D/d) ratio within the range of one to four. The cylinder with the inserted core body pieces is mounted vertically on a furnace and heated so that the cylinder becomes elongated and its outside diameter collapses to form a core rod from which core rod sections with D/d ratios greater than five, can be cut. A soot overcladding is deposited on the circumference of a core rod section until the diameter of the deposited soot builds to a determined value. The core rod section with the deposited soot overcladding is consolidated to obtain a finished optical fiber preform. The preform preferably has a D/d ratio of about 15 or more, and an optical fiber may be drawn directly from the preform.

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Cumming, GA, United States of America

Eric L Barish