TO FIND OPTIMAL PARAMETERS OF GLUING OPTICAL FIBERS IN LASER CUTTING MACHINE COMBINERS MANUFACTURING BY EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

A Manufacturing process of the combiners which is a part of laser cutting machine is composed of many sub-processes. One sub-process is bonding the input optical fibers to the output optical fibers and then applying the epoxy glue UV3411 to cling these optical fibers in a glass tube together. Currently, glue shrinkage after UV curing is a defective type with highest defect rate among the others which is not repairable. Therefore,
this research is aimed to determine the optimal parameters on the process of gluing the optical fibers in the combiner manufacturing by using 2k factorial design of experiment. Factors in the experiment are curing position, glue quantity and humidity. The research result indicates that the curing position at the edge of glass tube, glue quantity at 6 mm. in glass tube, and humidity at 50%RH is the optimal parameters. When applying this condition in the process, glue shrinkage defect rate in process can be reduced from 17.22% to 3.89% or approximately 128,000 baht/week of cost reduction.
Keywords: Laser Cutting Machine Combiners, Optical Fibers Gluing Process, Optimal Parameters