The invention concerns a method for transferring a large number of fiber ends of a bundle of optical waveguides, especially glass, quartz or plastic fibers, into a large number of specified positions with an alignment apparatus which includes openings which vary in size in a specified range as well as a method for manufacturing a glass, quartz or plastic fiber ends which are connectable with a plug arrangement.
With glass fiber cables with a great number of glass fibers, it has up until now been customary to grasp the individual fibers manually and transfer them individually into a specified position.
In this way, for example, glass fibers could be arranged lying alongside one another, in a one dimensional array, and joined together to form a plug connector for a glass fiber cable.
The disadvantage in a process of this type was that this process is very expensive for an exact positioning of many glass, quartz and plastic fiber ends.
In particular, a process of this type does not permit transferring a two-dimensional glass fiber array with, for example, 2×2 to 40×40 glass fibers, into a connector so that a glass fiber cable with a large number of glass fibers in a two dimensional, for example square or rectangular matrix results. In particular, the processes according to the state of the art did not allow a very exact positioning, in the range of a few micrometers (μm), of a large number of closely spaced glass fiber ends.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds