Low-cost automated fiber pigtailing machine

Abstract

Automated fiber pigtailing machines (AFPMs) have been designed and built under an ARPA-funded project The AFPM enables many of the critical technologies to perform automated sub-micron fiber pigtailing compatible with a low-cost manufacturing environment. These technologies include low-cost high-precision stages, computer vision to replace the labor-intensive coarse alignment, and many details of parts handling and feeding. Subsequent generations of the AFPM may build upon the design concepts developed here to pigtail fibers to OE devices in more complicated geometries. For example, all applications for this project use epoxy to attach the fibers, so no applications using solder or laser welding have been considered. Also, the stages to manipulate the fibers provide only three axes of translation, so no rotational degrees of freedom are available, including the very important roll axis for polarization-dependent applications. The third AFPM at LLNL will be used to develop some of these capabilities.