Equipment

The first Fibre Draw Tower in Singapore is 8.5m tall and comes with two sides capable of pulling fibres at a rate of up to 200m/min. Side 1 is equipped with a graphite resistance furnace​​ that is able to cover temperatures up to 2500ºC for drawing of silica fibres from preforms with diameters ranging from <5mm to 30mm. Side 2 comes equipped with an interchangeable graphite resistance furnace and softglass furnace, capable of drawing silica canes/capillaries and softglass (chalcogenide, fluoride, heavy metal oxide and tellurite) fibres respectively.

COFT fabricates its silica preforms by MCVD, which involves the deposition of glass particles on the inside wall of a substrate tube using gaseous reactions at high temperatures, according to the desired refractive index profile of the final fibre. The tube is subsequently collapsed into a rod, which is the precursor of the fibre cladding and core structure.

The PK2610 preform index profiler is used to measure the refractive index of preforms fabricated by the MCVD process at COFT. The profiler is equipped with an automatic preform tip location system and has the capability of performing slice as well as helix measurements of a preform. 

This machine is designed to test the tension of the fibres drawn at COFT. It can also be used for rewinding fibres from a big reel on the draw tower to a small international standard reel. 

The SG Controls Glass Working Lathe is used to perform all glass working processes related to preform fabrication. Some of the processes include preform sleeving, stretching and fire polishing.

The IFA-100 Fibre Index Profiler is used to determine the refractive index profile of fibres drawn from the Fibre Draw Tower. This equipment is capable of carrying out 1-D and 2-D index profile measurements, as well measuring the residual stress in a fibre by measuring the refractive index at 2 orthogonal polarisations.

The LZM-100 Glass Processing Station makes use of a CO₂ laser heat source to perform a wide range of glass working processes on fabricated fibres. These processes include: large diameter (400um) fibre splicing, photonic-crystal fibre (PCF) alignment and splicing, fibre tapering, ball lensing, fibre coupling and making of fibre combiners.