Free drawing and polymer coating of silica glass optical fibers

The paper is primarily to highlight the current issues concerning fiber drawing and coating. The main emphasis is on high-volume production of silica-based optical fibers by using a large preform and a high-speed drawing. The commercial application of these processes has led to increasing the productivity in fiber manufacturing and resulted in a low cost of produced fibers. In order to systematically address the problems associated with the fiber manufacturing process, the fiber drawing system was divided into three major functional sections: heating, cooling, and coating zones. The governing equations at each section were formulated to describe the process mechanics and to identify the key control parameters for drawing and coating. These process parameters are the basic elements of implementing a streamline production system of optical fibers.