Use of measured force as an indicator for end face contact in mechanical fiber optic splicing

In all trials, both measured forces spiked sharply upon end face contact. The optical power throughput plateaued for an insertion distance of nearly 2 mm before decreasing due to fiber bending outside of the capillary. This plateau corresponded to insertion losses as low as 0.12 dB, and was typically below 0.3 dB. Our results show that these force spikes strongly coincided with the maxima in optical power; meaning that forces measured in this way can be used as an indicator during construction of low insertion loss mechanical fiber optic splices. Future work involves adapting our apparatus to automatically halt motion when the force spikes are detected, making similar measurements using multimode optical fibers, and miniaturization for transition towards fielding this unit as support equipment.