3D printing has potential to cut cost of optical silica fibres

it’s no exaggeration to say that optical silica fibres are among the most important materials for the world economy. High-speed Internet depends on them, and therefore so do many of the financial transactions that underpin stock markets. However, making them is a labour-intensive and precise process.

The new technique, developed by a research team led by John Canning of the University of technology in Sydney, collaborating with Gang-Dean Peng’s team from University of New South Wales and colleagues from Harbin Engineering University and Yanshan University in China produces a preform from optical silica that can be drawn into fibres using a much simpler and cheaper procedure.

"Making silica optical fibre involves the labour-intensive process of spinning tubes on a lathe, which requires the fibre's core or cores to be precisely centered," explained Canning. "With additive manufacturing, there's no need for the fibre geometry to be centered. This removes one of the greatest limitations in fibre design and greatly reduces the cost of fibre manufacturing."