Automated Feeding Mechanism for Optical Fiber Bundle Coating

With fiber optic consumption rapidly growing every year, production companies are looking to make their production lines more efficient to keep up with the demand. Currently, manual priming of the lines is an inefficient process and is susceptible to human error. This study covered the design process and the solutions in developing an automated feeding mechanism. The final mechanism involves the integration of a two-roller design, coupled with an over-running clutch to detect the fiber take-up. A pneumatic actuator can then disengage the drive rollers from the fiber allowing the production line to increase to full operating speed after the completion of the priming process. Following the implementation of this automated feeding system, significant improvements such as the potential reduction of priming time and the elimination of human error were observed, leading to enhanced overall operational reliability.