Following on from our earlier tips on Optimising Arc Parameters for the Y70 fusion splicer here are some further tips to improve your fusion splicing productivity. If you have not read that article yet, please do so.

Y70 Manual Arc Parameter Adjustment
When the “Program Check” assesses that the Arc is too weak or too strong, the splicer will increase or decrease the Pre Arc Power (PAP) and Arc Power (AP) by 5 units at a time. As you become more familiar with the Program Check process, you will be able to judge of how much the parameters need to be adjusted by assessing the size of the gap after the Arc test. If the adjustment required is large, making a manual adjustment will speed up the adjustment process.

To adjust fusion splicer parameters manually, follow these steps:

1. Turn on the fusion splicer.

2. Clean and cleave fibers. Load cleaved fibers into the fusion splicer.
3. enter the “Setup Menu”

4. Use the arrow keys to move to “Program Check” and press to select.

5. Press to begin the Arc test.

6. The splicer will report “Arc Weak”, “Arc Strong”, or “Arc Good”. This report is based on the extent to which the glass fibre is burnt away as per this diagram

7. If the arc is good, press to reset, the program check is complete and you can proceed to splicing.

8. If the arc is too weak or too strong, press to exit the program check and return to the splicer menu.

9. Use the arrow keys ( and ) to move to “Change Parameter”

10. If the Arc is too weak, increase the PreArcPower and ArcPower parameters by the same amount. Make a judgement on how much to adjust the parameters based on the size of the gap after the Program Check.

11. As a rule PreArcPower should be 10 units less than ArcPower. PreArcPower should be in the range of 30-150 and ArcPower in the range of 40-160.

12. Return to step 2 to repeat the Program Check.

Some other tips:
Whenever you change fiber brands, you should adjust the splicer settings to match the fiber.

Keep a record of the settings for the main brands of fibre you use. Settings can be seen by entering the Menu, then entering the Change Parameters section. This will give you a good starting point when setting up for a new job. You can enter these settings manually by following instructions in section 6.5 of the user manual.

A Bubble in the splice
If multimode fiber splices are resulting in a bubble, adjust PreArcTime first. Change PreArctime from 0.3 to 0.28 then test again, if still causing a bubble in the fiber, continue to adjust.

Note: Settings for PreArcTime should be between 0.25-0.32 for multimode fiber, and 0.15-0.25 for singlemode fiber.

If adjusting the PreArcTime is not successful in eliminating the bubble, adjust the PreArcPower.

If the fiber splice shape is slightly fat, but not a bubble, decrease the Forward setting.

Note: Settings for Forward should be between 11 and 14 for multimode and singlemode fiber types

Note: We do not recommend you change settings for Forward Speed or Cleave Angles