Precision Fiber Winding, Spooling and Metrology

Precision winding, spooling and metrology, together have become one of Berkshire’s strongest core competencies.  As a very early entrant, Berkshire has ratcheted up their fiber design, selection, winding, measuring and validation capabilities, continuously improving all the value drivers of this Solution area. 

Starting with fundamentals: choosing the right fiber design, coating and, dimensions; the ability to precisely measure the “optical” length of a fiber and correlate to the specified delay time; to minimize external perturbations of refractive index, primarily thermally or thermo-mechanically induced; to design packaging and any environmental controls that support the lifetime of the coil.  With precision coil metrology, comes the ability to measure and spool fiber and cable in general, a capability that supports all of Berkshire’s fiber and cable products.

Berkshire Strengths

• Fiber design and selection; tradeoffs
• Coating materials and dimensions and their environmental and aging behavior; winding tension and environmental stabilization
• Refractive index metrology and its impact on optical length precision and changes over temperature and time
• Novel coatings and miniaturization of coils
• Splicing and termination of sub-125µm cladding singlemode fibers
• Precision winding and tension control
• Adhesive and adhesive-less winding
• Multiple fibers per winding designs
• Thermally insensitive designs and packaging of network elements for delay lines, dispersion compensation and sensing applications.

Berkshire Solutions

• Delay line coils
• Discrete, short to very long and concatenated delay solutions
• Thermally insensitive coils
• High temperature coils
• Wide temperature range coils
• Ultra-small, long delay coils
• Small clad/coating coils
• Sensor coils with high thermal sensitivity
• Precision cable winding
• Precision physical and optical length metrology
• Precision length metrology for large core fibers

Product Focus

• Precision length spooling
• Precision fiber winding
• Precision singlemode fiber coils
• Reduced diameter fiber winding, splicing and termination
• Spooled and fully packaged fixed delay lines
• Packaged, multiple delay lines
• Multiple-switched delay lines
• Thermally controlled delay line packaging
• Dispersion Compensation Coils and Modules (DCCs, DCMs)
• Concatenated, switchable network delay elements.

Contact Us at 860-868-0081 to discuss your precision winding requirements – whether for discrete, short sensor coils, custom network delay elements or dispersion compensation and control, Berkshire Engineers Solutions.