Abstract

Transfer-molded, biconical single-fiber connectors with a mean insertion loss of 0.21 dB without index match have been reported . In order to achieve this low loss, both the intrinsic fiber characteristics such as core diameter and numerical aperture (NA), and the external alignment parameters such as transverse offset, tilt angle, and end separation must be accurately controlled. This paper describes an automatic inspection system which measures the aforementioned parameters, and provides statistical information as a rapid feedback to the molding runs.