Perhaps one of the most maddening things about a mixed material is entrained bubbles. Depending on how you mix, you may entrain none, or a ton of them. You want to stab them, push them and blow on them. Anything to break them. But in many photonics applications...
Epoxy is a permanent adhesive. When properly chosen for your application and substrates, and properly cured, it will form a strong, permanent bond. At times though, you may find that you need to recover bonded parts or clean parts to remove excess cured epoxy. So...
When working with epoxies and adhesives, there are several consistent areas that beg for clarity. FOC knows because we generally field those questions and concerns. Among the top of that list are: Room temperature storage best practices Storage...
From time to time, FOC has been asked to recommend a pigment that can be safely added to UV curable coatings as well as offer advice about what ratio of pigment to coating is acceptable without compromising the integrity of the coating. As communicated by our...
Fabricating fiber optic cable assemblies is still in large part a manual process, requiring knowledge and skill. When something in the process goes awry, an investigation is needed to identify and address the cause. Recently, our team of experts met to discuss some...
Part 3: Bonding Optical Fiber to the Ceramic Ferrule “How do I know what curing schedule I should use?” This is a common question that fiber optic cable assembly houses ask – and it’s a particularly good question. Why? When our customers ask this...
Part 2: Bonding Optical Fiber to the Ceramic Ferrule Introduction When fiber optic cable assembly manufacturers ask us to help troubleshoot their epoxy curing issues, we find that some problems stem from improper mixing of epoxy. Other problems arise from lax cleaning...
Part 1: Bonding Optical Fiber to the Ceramic Ferrule Introduction Too often, the process of bonding optical fiber to a ferrule – the epoxy step – is treated as an afterthought in fiber optic cable assembly houses. However, this is an extremely...
The glass transition, Tg, is the temperature at which cured epoxies go from being rigid and glassy to being rubbery and more flexible. Most of us think of cured epoxies as being pretty hard (Shore D) materials; and they are, due to the crosslinked nature of their...
In the fiber optic cable assembly process, working with epoxy generates a lot of questions. When I visit fabrication facilities, we discuss the finer points of mixing the material, loading syringes, minimizing waste, heat-treating crystallized epoxy, and more. For...
For fiber optic cable assembly manufacturers, bi-packs of 2.5-gram and 4-gram are typical package sizes for epoxy. While these packages contain a very small amount of material, they support the fabrication of quite a few cable connectors and assemblies. (Note that...
When I meet with customers, I field a variety of questions regarding epoxy processes in many applications, including fiber optic cable assemblies. This article addresses commonly asked questions: Why is bond line thickness important? What is the recommended minimum...
Fiber Optic Center has made a change to our epoxy packaging, and I want to inform you of this beneficial change. Plus, as I reflected on this topic, I thought about the fact that I field a lot of “how-to” questions from my customers about using epoxy bi-packs. In this...
During a recent visit to a customer’s production facility, I was shown two containers of crystallized epoxy: one looked milky, one was nearly solid. My customer was understandably concerned and feared the epoxy had “gone bad.” It may sound strange, but I was glad this...
If we had a nickel for every time we are asked “Why are epoxy bi-packs 2.5 grams?” Fiber Optic Center provides epoxy in two-part bi-packs that are typically 2.5 grams. While 2.5 grams might seem small, some modern-day applications are very small, and...
