Fibercore Ltd at OSA Advanced Photonics, Colorado Springs

Our attendance at small specialist shows provides us with an opportunity to focus our attention on a technical level with experts in our marketplaces – and the Advanced Photonic Congress in Colorado Springs last week was no exception.

With the attendance of Engineers from Universities, Research Groups and R&D departments of major international companies, Dr Andy Gillooly and Ellen Landis were able to discuss the technical benefits and specifications of our fibers with scientists and engineers working on the latest projects. 

Fiber Bragg Gratings were a particular focus of the Meeting and Andy’s expertise in the field enabled him to discuss our photosensitive singlemode fibers for sensor applications, introducing our polyimide coated bend-insensitive fibers for the harsh environments of oil and gas sensing.  His extensive knowledge and experience in laser applications also enabled him to discuss our fibers in detail in this advancing technology.

Other topics covered by Ellen, using her extensive experience of the specialty optical fiber market, and Andy included erbium-doped fibers in EDFAs for telecommunications and various fibers for bio-photonics, as well as discussions around applications for our new HiBi Spun fiber.

For all those that came to our booth, it was a pleasure to discuss your application and our fibers with you and we will be in touch very shortly with the information that you require.  If you were unable to attend the meeting and would like to know more about how our fibers can help your project, email us at sales@fibercore.com and one of us will get in touch with you as quickly as we can.

Join Fibercore at OSA's Advanced Photonics Congress in Colorado Springs

17th June - 21st June 2012

Cheyenne Mountain Resort

Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA

Fibercore Ltd will be marking their 30th year as specialty fiber development and production experts, by exhibiting at the OSA Advanced Photonics Congress, where we will be talking about our vast array of fiber products and their outstanding versatility and performance.

To maintain a leading position within a technically demanding marketplace requires a unique combination of customer focus, quality and product performance.  Fibercore's fiber experts look forward to working with you to develop a true customer partnership, delivering quantifiable value that goes well beyond the product itself.

Of particular interest at our booth will be Fiber Bragg Gratings and how Fibercore's PS series of fibers can help.  With a high-germania and boron-co-doped core composition that enables high-reflectivity gratings to be written without the need to hydrogen-load, the Mode Field Diameters of Fibercore PS Series fibers have also been engineered so that gratings can be spliced into standard telecommunications or pigtailing fibers with minimal excess loss.  Alternatively, if bend-insensitivity is important for your project, our high-germania, low-attenuation, specialty singlemode fibers offer significantly higher photosensitivity than standard telecommunications fibers allowing long arrays to be written with our without hydrogen loading.

Dr Andy Gillooly has a PhD in Fiber Bragg Gratings and will be available to answer all your FBG questions on our booth.  Both he and Ellen Landis, our Director of Sales for North America, will also be talking about how Fibercore's precision products can be used in the harshest of conditions, such as our polyimide-coated high NA fibers, which are being used for monitoring deep-sea oil reserves - where extreme accuracy is paramount in one of the most challenging of all conditions imaginable.

We look forward to seeing you at the conference and talking about your individual fiber needs.  But if you are unable to attend, please contact us directly on +44 (0)23 8076 9893 or email us at sales@fibercore.com.  We are always very happy to discuss your fiber frequirements and to offer free expert advice on the use of specialty fibers in your products or projects, drawing on over three decades of experience and knowledge.

Specialty Optical Fiber Design for Commercial Intrinsic Fiber Sensors

Your opportunity to read the paper presented by Dr Chris Emslie at the SPIE Defense, Security & Sensing Conference in Baltimore on Friday 27th April.

Below is the introduction to Chris' White Paper, the full copy can be downloaded from our website.

After 30 years of promise, and in some cases one or more false-starts, intrinsic fiber sensors based on 'Specialty' optical fibers are at last becoming a genuine, commercial reality.  The first sensor to achieve this status is undoubtedly the fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) which has grown steadily in volume over the past decade and has now gained widespread acceptance as a high reliability alternative to both conventional, spinning-mass and also ring-laser gyroscopes.  FOG is now being joined by both current-sensors and sensors for a broad-range of measureands, based on well-established acoustic, seismic and non-linear scattering techniques, primarily for oil-extraction and civil engineering.  It is safe to say that this 30 year gestation has proved far longer than anyone had either expected or hoped.  However, scientists and engineers should take some comfort that this delay owes little, if anything, to the strength or state of the underlying technology.

Fiber Hydrophone Schematic

In some cases, for example FOG, the root-cause lies in the conservatism of a customer base dominated by Defence and Aerospace that necessarily views 'new' technologies as un-tested and therefore potentially unreliable.  In others, product development has been slowed by significant and global skills shortages, when one project has taken clear precedent over another - a phenomenon that led to the commercialisation of the erbium doped fiber amplifier an entire decade before the fiber laser.  In others still, such as fiber optic current sensors and hydrophones, the market simply has not been ready - either because existing technologies fulfilled the current need, or were too well-entrenched for easy (or willing) substitution.  Although the road to commercial acceptance has been a long and difficult one, the path has been eased significantly by the availability of 'Specialty Fibers' either adapted, or designed specifically for sensors.  This paper identifies seven principal fiber design considerations, bend-insensitivity, jointing characteristics, reliability, birefringence and mechanical stiffness and references their significance in the context of three types of fiber sensor that have either achieved, or are close to achieving commercial accpetance:  FOG, acoustic and seismic sensors and current-sensors.

Copies of the presentation are available by contacting info@fibercore.com.

Fibercore attending SPIE Defense, Security & Sensing 2012

Fibercore Ltd are looking forward to participating in the forthcoming SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing 2012 conference which will be held in Baltimore between 23-27 April 2012.

The show provides the opportunity for us to present our range of reduced-clad HiBi fibers for the gyroscope market together with the complementary products that we offer to support these PM fibers for FOGs. Fibercore Ltd have sold more than 80,000 km of Bow-Tie fiber into the marketplace since it was introduced in 1983, more than enough to wrap twice around the Equator, and ships around 1.3 million additional meters each month to FOG manufacturers all around the World. We believe this figure is higher than that of any other ‘specialty’ fiber manufacture, making us the market-leader of fiber into the FOG marketplace.

The depth of experience and knowledge of our team of engineers, some with more than 20 years’ experience working with specialty optical fibers, enables us to support our customers by working closely with them to ensure that our fiber provides the optimum performance that each of their products demand. As a result, The HB-G fiber is available with a wide range of options including high NA, short beatlengths and radiation tolerant versions to cover as many requirements as possible, and if we you require something a little more special, we will be pleased to discuss it with you.

Ellen Landis, our Director of Sales for North America, will be attending the Tabletop 627 to welcome your enquiries if you are attending the Show. Dr Chris Emslie will also be available towards the end of the week and will be giving a presentation on ‘Specialty Fiber Design for Commercial, Intrinsic Fiber Sensors’ on Friday 27th April at 10.30am.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Fibercore's 30th Birthday celebrations at OFC/NFOEC 2012

Fibercore Ltd will, once again, be exhibiting at OFC 2012 where we will be showcasing our range of fiber products and services. Our Sales Team, consisting of Dr Andy Gillooly, Jose Maria Alvarez and Ellen Landis, together with Dr Chris Emslie, will be available on our booth 1910 to discuss our specialty optical fibers and the technical services that Fibercore Ltd can offer for your applications.

In addition, we will be taking part in the FTTx Resource Center where you will be able to find out about our revolutionary CP1500Y dual-clad cladding-pump fiber for CATV and FTTx amplifier applications, together with our IsoGain™ and MetroGain™ erbium doped fibers for C and L amplifiers and ASE applications.

Fibercore Ltd started its life in 1982 as a Spin-out from the World-renowned Optical Fiber Group of the University of Southampton (UK). Its role was to commercialise the innovations in specialty optical fibers developed at Southampton and this is exactly what we have done over the last 30 years, introducing fibers like the HiBi bow-tie PM fibers, our erbium-doped and cladding-pump fibers, our specialty singlemode fibers (now with the added protection of polyimide-coating), photosensitive fibers, and other rare-earth doped and co-doped fibers to name just a few. As well as celebrating 30 years at the forefront of the photonics specialty fiber industry, we are also celebrating our independence following the recent divestiture from Cisco.

If you are attending OFC, come along to the stand to find out more - and join in our Birthday celebrations on Tuesday afternoon where we will be sharing cupcakes and coffee with our guests.

Happy 30th Birthday, Fibercore Ltd

Fibercore Ltd started its life in 1982 as a Spin-out from the World-renowned Optical Fiber Group of the University of Southampton (UK). Its role was to commercialise the innovations in specialty optical fibers developed at Southampton. Beginning in 1982 with a spun Lo-Bi fiber developed for Faraday-effect current-sensors and with the now World-famous HiBi Bow-Tie Polarization Maintaining Fiber following very soon afterwards, Fibercore has introduced a continuous stream of innovative specialty fibers over the last three decades:

1982 Spun Low-Birefringence Fiber
1983 Bow-Tie Polarization Maintaining Fiber
1986 'Zing' Polarizing Fiber
1987 Neodymium Doped Fiber
1988 Erbium Doped Fiber
1989 Spun Bow-Tie, Elliptically-Birefringent Fiber
1993 Erbium-Ytterbium Co-Doped Fiber
1998 Intrinsically Photosensitive Boron Co-Doped Fiber
1999 Pure-Silica, 'Cladding Pump' Rare-Earth Doped Fiber
2002 50 µm, Low-Loss and Highly Bend-Insensitive SM Fiber
2009 Pure-Silica core SM Fiber for use in UV
2010 Re-introduction of improved Polarizing Fiber
2012 Re-introduction of improved Spun Bow-Tie, Elliptically-Birefringent Fiber

The reality is that Fibercore was active in the Specialty Optical Fiber Market long before that market really existed, introducing many products well before their 'time' - as testified by the recent re-introduction of both Zing Polarizing Fiber and Spun Bow-Tie, which now benefit from both growing markets and a further 20 years of development of the underlying technology.

Its recent divestiture from Cisco means that Fibercore starts its third decade as an Independent Company, with the freedom to really push forward the boundaries of the technologies that truly benefit its customers in Aerospace, Metrology, Telecoms Components, Defense, Fundamental Research ..., making full use of the expertise and experience that Fibercore has been known for since the very beginning. Fibercore's team of seasoned Specialty Fiber Professionals, with a 'core' that has remained with the Company since the 1990s and with some members offering more than 25 years of high-level experience in the Industry, ensure that we deliver a level of customer service and both pre- and post-sale technical support that is second to none.
Our fibers are used in an incredibly broad range of applications spread throughout more than 50 countries around the Globe including fiber optic gyroscopes (FOGs), fiber optic hydrophones, fiber lasers, fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), embedded sensors, specialist medical, government and corporate research agencies and telecommunications components.

Throughout our 30 year history, we have had the privilege to track and support many of our customers from their earliest research, right through to the high-volume, but still 'specialised' manufacturing that now makes up 90% of our business. This breadth of experience, together with our singularity of purpose and diversity of our customer base enabled us to continue to grow and prosper, throughout both the Telecoms Crash of 2001 and the Credit Crunch that began in 2007 and is still with us to this day.

The move to Fibercore House, the Company's purpose-designed R&D and Manufacturing Facility, in 2003 increased our manufacturing capabilities ten-fold and enabled us to introduce 'World-Class Manufacturing' philosophies to what was traditionally viewed as a scaled-up laboratory process. The total shipments of fiber from Fibercore House now average more that 1,300,000 m per month - a figure believed to be higher than that of any other 'specialty' fiber manufacturer anywhere in the World and providing Fibercore Limited with unmatched experience in the volume manufacture of highly-specified 'Specialty' Fiber. The Company's current share of the PM fiber for gyroscopes market is estimated to be in excess of 95%, with major OEMs in the United States, France, Germany, Korea, Italy and Japan.

Alongside the development of new technology, Fibercore has been the forerunner for companies in the industry to gain formal, third-part certification for its business processes, achieving ISO9001 (Quality) in 1993 and applying Telcordia™ (Bellcore) reliability testing to all of its product lines since 2000. More recently, these standards have been joined by ISO14001 (Environment) and OHSAS18001 (Health and Safety) certification and we ensure that all products comply with RoHS and REACH requirements.

In 2001 the Company was presented with the Queen's Award for Enterprise: International Trade (the UK's highest business honour) and was assessed to be the Country's most successful manufacturing business by the presigious Experian Survey. Since then the Company has been awarded three additional Queen's Awards for Enterprise: Innovation in 2004, and both International Trade and Sustainable Development in 2007, making Fibercore Limited the only company ever to have won these awards in all three categories.

The recent expansion of the Development Team and the introduction of new photonics engineers into our skill base enables us to continue our commitment to the future of the specialist fiber industry. With the renewed interest in current sensors, development is well underway on the new 'Spun' fiber and recent improvements to our already established IsoGain™ erbium doped amplifier fiber have strengthened our position in the amplifier marketplace. All this means that Fibercore goes from strength to strength, and we will continue to support our customers and the industry for the next 30 years, and beyond.

Photonics West 2012 Product Presentation by Dr Andy Gillooly: RGB - UV Fibers

Broadband Fibers for use at 305 nm - 450 nm and 450 nm - 800 nm

With the growing use of fibers in Medical and Spectroscopy applications, the need to transmit red, green and blue light down a single fiber is an increasingly important requirement.

The broadband performance of the Fibercore SM450 specialty singlemode fiber is perfect for these applications where the high NA insures that, even with the fiber coiled, bend-losses are kept to a minimum across the full broadband range, from 450 nm to 800 nm. The all-silica SM300-SC and SM400-SC fibers extend the wavelength range into the UV and are ideal for use from 305 nm to 450 nm, where the absense of Germania in their core significantly reduces photodarkening at blue and UV wavelengths.

Our second presentation at this year's Photonics West Exhibition in San Francisco will be showcasing these fibers, so if you are attending the show and want to know more, then come along to North Hall D, Demo Area 2, at 4.30 pm on Tuesday 24th January 2012 where Dr Andy Gillooly will introduce the fibers to you. Alternatively, visit our website at http://www.fibercore.com/