Corporate Discoveries
Harsh Environments Call for
Specialty Solution
Meet OFS Specialty Fiber
Company Profile
“Of course, the road to scientific insight has always been paved with small exceptions and irregularities. The major guideposts and turning points often seem to be insignificant blobs, spots, and specks. The locks to the most impenetrable doors sometimes seem to be sprung by minor, serendipitous discoveries or mistakes.”
- Sympathetic Vibrations: Reflections on Physics As a Way of Life, a book by K.C. Cole
By John Snow
Dr. David DiGiovanni
Glass is one of the strongest materials on earth.
Two decades ago, scientists discovered a material that helped provide shielding to the optical fiber to initiate a controlled explosion. That finding sparked development of optical fiber for specialized uses.
OFS Specialty Photonics is located in Avon, Conn.; Somerset, N.J.; and Broendby, Denmark. Together they compose the Specialty Photonics Division of a global corporation, the multi-billion dollar Furukawa Electric Company, headquartered in Japan.
OFS is the second largest manufacturer of optical fiber in the world; (Corning is the largest). More than 150 people work at the Avon facility, which includes offices, marketing staff, and the manufacturing of fiber on site. Large-scale research and development is conducted by its associated company, OFS Laboratories, of Somerset, N.J. , headed by Dr. David DiGiovanni.
Technology discovered at the lab is transferred to the local manufacturing sites for development, production, and commercialization.
“Specialty” fiber makes possible reliable transmission in harsh environments of almost every type: chemical exposure, water and humidity, high and low temperatures, excessive vibration and stress, radiation, crushing and bending forces, and more.
Company products involve high-power transmission, light manipulation en route, laser delivery, and (sometimes at the same time) acquisition of environmental information that requires precisely calibrated sensitivity to light, temperature, pressure, chemical composition, and other factors whose variance is important to the user.
Specialty fiber is called into play in harsh, demanding environments, such as inside coal mines, up the shafts of wind turbines, in automobiles, and even outer space. Fiber delivers data on casino floors and provides communication between cockpit and flight controls for fighter jets and helicopters - where vibration and stress are the norm. Sensing is another area that is a growing market, as Homeland Security seeking new ways to use technology for security, such as chemical sensors, applications for shipping, transportation and port security.
“We’ve seen many things in more than 20 years, but our customers surprise us all the time,” said Michael Fortin, vice president, marketing and sales, OFS Specialty Photonics Division, Avon. “That’s what makes this industry so interesting. One customer needs instantaneous data without radio frequency interference. Another needs to deliver information through an area of high humidity and wants the fiber to last for 18 years.”
Adaptability Calls for Robust Fiber
Fiber is made on site using silica rods, called "preforms", created by a sister division (in Sturbridge, Mass.).
A “draw furnace” heats the preform to a taffy-like consistency, where it is then “pulled” to specifications - thin, thick or anywhere in between, with variations in configuration. Special coatings and claddings are added to the glass at various points along the vertical tower to guide the light, add strength, and perform other functions.
The fiber is further protected in accordance with clients needs with industry-specific cabling and connectorization.
The Avon facility started off as part of Ensign Bickford (a company that made explosives), which in 1995 sold the optics business to SpecTran; in 2000 Lucent acquired SpecTran; Lucent then sold off its optical fiber activities to Furukawa Electric Company, headquartered in Japan, the corporation that owns the company today.
“When Ensign Bickford invented the hard clad silica fiber coating (HCS), which is our trademark, it was because the optical fiber that existed at that time was not robust enough for their requirements. If you are going to initiate an explosion, you need something that is pretty robust,” said Fortin. HCS fiber cladding is proprietary, with original patents dating back to the 1970s.
“Once the scientists invented this new thing, better than anything on the marketplace, the blasting industry, which is very conservative and slow to change, did not adopt the new discovery,” said Fortin.
Specialty cladding and coatings are applied to prevent microcracks formation from growing.
Specialty cladding serves another purpose. For an optical fiber to do its job, it must be connected to something. Connectors can be difficult, time-consuming, and inconvenient to apply, calling for epoxy, a polishing step, and sometimes even requiring baking or curing in special ovens. For a simple and quick solution, a technician must be able to cut the fiber or cable on site, strip back outer layers, crimp a connector directly to the fiber.
OFS invented this method of connections, called “’crimp and cleave’, according to Fortin.
There are limitations. "Specialty fiber is expensive and is made to fulfill a specific industry need.”
OFS was represented at a recent NEFC FiberFest symposium in Massachusetts.
Company products fill a hefty “look-book” catalogue. If nothing currently manufactured will fit the need, OFS will create the solution - hence, the “specialty” part of their name.
Robust, Diverse Market Growth
The specialty photonics division covers a diverse market.
“Our emphasis is non-telecommunications - medical, industrial, military, transportation and sensing,” said Fortin. “For industrial, you’ll see things like factory automation, data communication on the factory floor. OFS is a premier supplier of optical fiber in the medical laser delivery market. For the military applications, the F-18 and F-22, F-16 and several helicopter programs take specially designed cables, which incorporate special fibers and are used for data communications onboard the aircraft On the transportation side, we do data communications links on high-speed trains. Also, what is called the “MOST” protocol, which is a local area network inside a car. Today plastic fibers are used, but the data rates of tomorrow’s vehicle will require glass fiber to handle more bandwidth, with even more development in the future.”
Growth is happening at all levels, across the board.
“Finding talent is always a challenge,” said Fortin. “Typically, this industry can get incestuous, and the company has spawned others now competing with us. This is a very technology-driven industry, no doubt. We are always in search of good engineers, good scientists. We have world renown people working at OFS Laboratories, including Dr. David DiGiovanni. Each company site has its own set of scientists developing new products. The research is done at the labs, but the development is done at the divisional level.”
“Telecommunications took a serious downturn two years ago, but what helped us here is that we are diversified, so we didn’t feel it so much. The growth we’re seeing right now is across all sectors. Telecommunications is on its way back and we are cautiously optimistic about that.”
About David DiGiovanni
David DiGiovanni, president, OFS Laboratories, the central research organization of OFS, began his career with a post-doctoral position in the Optical Fiber Research Department in Bell Laboratories. He has weathered the transition from AT&T to Lucent to OFS in the same organization and worked on various phenomena related to optical fiber design and fabrication. Notable contributions include erbium-doped optical fiber for amplifiers, high power amplifiers and lasers, Raman amplification and optical components. His work on optical amplifiers received a Lucent Patent Recognition Award in 2000.
About Corporate, Divisions:
Furukawa Electric Company is a $7.3 billion company in Japan and OFS is part of its telecommunications group. That group is a $1.1 billion division. Within OFS, headquartered in Norcross, Ga. there are several, one of which is Specialty Photonics with three sites - this one in Avon, one in Somerset, N.J. ; and Broendby, Denmark.
Other OFS divisions include fiber, cable, and connectivity.
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