A Guide to Fiber Opening Machine A fiber opening machine is also named a fiber splicer. It is an instrument used to split, align and polish the ends of two optical fibers so they can be joined together to produce a working end face according to precise optical and mechanical standards. Fiber splicers use two kinds of fiber optic connectors. One is a mechanical splice connector such as FC, SC, ST, or LC connector. The other is an active optical fiber splice connector usually with a short length of fiber pigtails. The splice closure consists of two or more stages: the pre-polishing stage, the optical splicing stage, the mechanical splicing stage, and the post-polishing stage. Optical fiber splice closure which fully automates these steps becomes an end face of an optical fiber fusion splicer.
The splicing machine itself can be classified as an in-line type or an off-line type. In in-line type, the process flow is from left to right, that is from the opposite ends of fibers to the duplexer in the front and out of the fusion splicer at the rear. In the off-line type, it goes from right to left, that is from the fusion splicer in the front to the opposite ends of fibers in the rear.