BW May 2018

5/1: Jim explained that he ground the metal pieces for the ferrules so they will direct light more directly toward the fuse site. We may need a collimator to block some of the light if it is heating too far from the fuse site.

Jim wants to have a machinist make some high quality, professional grade pieces that would be the best ones we have. Then we would have two sets and while we are cleaning one we can be installing new ferrules with the other.

Because of the high pressure and heat that we use to fuse the fibers, the melted material is almost as hard to contain as water. In our current setup we can't avoid wings without risking a weak set of fibers.

However, there are things we can do to reduce the potential for wings. One is to put an additional lamp behind the fibers to be fused. The current lamp is in front, and it needs to heat a lot to reach the back as well as the front. With a rear lamp we would not have to heat as much or we wouldn't have to push as hard to fuse the fibers.

The problem with a rear lamp is that we could not put it on a line perpendicular to the fibers and intersecting the fuse site unless the lamp is much smaller than the front lamp. We would have to angle a larger lamp and use collimators to direct the light correctly.

Instead of a lamp, we might use another kind of heater, but we would need to ensure that it would heat the fibers, not just the outside of the quartz ferrules.

5/2: Today I can cut two more bundles of sci-fis, one to replace the "To be milled" fibers that we will not use and the other as an extra bundle. But when I was about to start cutting, I found that we are out of snack bags to put the fibers in.

I looked around for somewhere to put the fibers temporarily. There is a snack bag I have been using for short fibers for fusing practice. I will use that one temporarily for one sci-fi bundle. In the storage closet in lab 405 I found a Thor Labs lab snacks box. Inside there were some shiny foil strips. Some of the strips were in a snack bag and some were loose in the box. There was also an empty snack bag in that box. Since it was empty, I will use it for the other sci-fi bundle to be cut today. It can be a permanent bag since we can always get another snack bag for the foil strips from the lab snacks box if we ever need one. I will label the empty bag and use it to store a bundle of sci-fis.