Franklin, TN--3SAE Technologies has introduced a fiber cleaver that holds the optical fiber with a low-temperature-liquid metal alloy, eliminating the mounting torque that tends to wreck many cleaves.
The Liquid Clamp Cleaver, which works with all standard-diameter-cladding and large-diameter-cladding fiber, is especially valuable when used with fibers from 125 to 650 microns in diameter that require very flat cleaves to keep splice losses low and beam quality high.
Held by solidifying metal
Conventionally, the primary cause of bad cleave angles is torsion strain in the fiber, induced by torque from conventional clamps. The 3SAE Technologies system uses a metal-alloy ingot that melts at less than the boiling point of water and is then cooled so that it solidifies around the fiber. The lead-free, cadmium-free alloy ingot solidifies to provide torque-free clamping even of fibers with non-round shapes, such as octagonal fibers.
The cleaver is user-controlled via software menus. The alloy ingots have a proprietary make-up and are available solely from 3SAE Technologies. For more info on the Liquid Clamp Cleaver, go to http://www.3sae.com.
3SAE Technologies is no stranger to the specialty of large-diameter fiber splicing: the company does research and development in adiabatic tapering, bundling and pump combining, photonic-crystal-fiber splicing, fiber stripping, cleaving, and ionic-plasma cleaning.
