Systems and methods for fabricating flexible optical fiber circuits
AssigneeFitel USA Corp.
InventorsJeffrey Harrison Hicks, Muhammed Afzal Shahid
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Abstract
A method for fabricating flexible optical fiber circuits, including routing optical fiber on a flexible substrate according to a predetermined pattern using an optical fiber routing head, wherein routing the optical fiber includes routing at least one non-disposable optical fiber portion and least one disposable test pattern. A cutting head is aligned to cut adjacent at least one segment of the non-disposable optical fiber portion based upon the accuracy with which the cutting head cuts adjacent to the test pattern. Using the test patterns avoids alignment errors that may otherwise occur during the cutting of the optical fiber circuit which can result in a total loss of the optical fiber substrate.
Claims11
A system for fabricating flexible optical fiber circuits, comprising:
- at least one flexible substrate;
- optical fiber routed on the at least one substrate, wherein the optical fiber includes at least one non-disposable portion and at least one disposable portion, and wherein the at least one disposable portion includes at least one optical fiber test pattern;
- a routing machine, comprising a cutting tool configurable to cut the at least one flexible substrate to fabricate a flexible optical fiber circuit, wherein the at least one routing machine utilizes the at least one optical fiber test pattern to align the cutting tool with respect the at least one non-disposable portion of the optical fiber.
A method for fabricating flexible optical fiber circuits, comprising:
- routing optical fiber on a flexible substrate according to a pattern using an optical fiber routing head, wherein routing the optical fiber includes routing at least one non-disposable optical fiber portion and at least one disposable optical fiber portion including at least one test pattern;
- and
- aligning a cutting head to cut adjacent at least one segment of the non-disposable optical fiber portion, wherein aligning the cutting tool is based upon the accuracy with which the cutting head cuts adjacent to the disposable optical fiber portion.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.