Student Projects
Contact Information
University: Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Facultad de Ingenieria Mecanica y Electrica
Team Members: Roberto Villarreal Montemayor (2016), Leonel Enrique Vigil Lozoya (2016)
Faculty Advisers: M.C. Leopoldo Rene Villarreal Jimenez, M.C. Sarmach Ulianov Enriquez Sias
Email Address: beto25j@hotmail.com, leonelvigil93@hotmail.com
Submission Language: English
Project Information
Title: Electro-Mechanical System to taper Optical Fiber
Description: This Electro-Mechanical System taper optical fiber to make sensors with some special characteristic, for example the sensor that is made is able to measurement some environments about our world, like gas, liquids, etc, and the main application is checking the quality of the alcohol, but in the future it will have a lot of applications because the presicion of the sensor is huge.
The goal is to have a tapered fiber that has some part of its lenght tapered it means the the center of the fiber will be smaller the the other part.
Once the optical fiber is tapered it works like a filter of light, and the filter will depend of the environment.
Products:
- NI myRIO model 1900
- LabVIEW myRIO 2014 with module of RT and Vision.
- 2 Stepper motors
- 1 Gas Electro-Valve
- 1 Pressure regulator
- 2 Drivers for Stepper motors
- 1 Power Supply
- 1 Gas Tank
- 1 Light Lamp
- 1 Camera
The Challenge: Design an Electro- Mechanical System which allow us to taper optical fiber with low error, because the optical fiber is tiny.
This System allow us to control the quantity and the lenght of tapered and it's able to reduce the diameter of the optical fiber from 125 um until 10um.
The Solution:
This system involves placing the optical fiber in two supports mounted on rails that can move linearly with micrometric displacements performed by motors which are controlled through LabVIEW. Simultaneously, the fiber is exposed to a burner used as a heat source by raising its temperature around 1250 ° C, it allows to reach a point at which the fiber can be deformed and thinned by the tension exerted on the ends.
The system was characterized to handle and choose the thickness at which you want to reduce the fiber.
Using NI Tools we reduce the time to design and to program the system and we spend more time doing test. we use LabVIEW because the software is very easy to use and because is versatile. the NI myRIO is able to control some different process in a little time, it allow us to control the final diameter and the final lenght of the fiber optic.
there are 2 fiber that were tapered
The second one was tapered for more time and thats why is smaller than the first one.
[VIDEO]
The project is now working but the resolution of the camera gives us at least 5um measurement error
we have spended 1 year creating this System.
The process of taper fiber has great impact in the world because sensors that are already made with optical fiber measure with a big presition due to the resolution and because it works using light.
To know about the whole applications that the optical fibers have, check out these links:
MEDICAL APPLICATIONS
SENSORS FOR BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3224405/
Humidity Sensors
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092540050600445X
Working Principle
And This is the poster of the Project:
