Have you ever encountered the problem that your splicing quality is getting worse and worse after a long time using? Why would this happen and how to fix it?

One of the important influence factors is ARC.

In general, fiber fusion splicer could calibrate its ARC by temperature, humidity and air pressure automatically.

But the aging and dirty condition of the electrodes will also cause the change of discharge intensity, and the discharge center will be shifted relative to the position of optical fiber fusion.

So as to achieve low loss and stable optical fiber fusion, we need to calibrate the ARC manually to correct the discharge to the standard strength under the below conditions:

①When the temperature, humidity and air pressure of the operating environment have great changes;

②Continuous splicing failure or high loss;

③Fusion splicer is not used for a long time, or the electrodes are used too many times;

④After cleaning or replacing the electrode.

It is recommended to conduct ARC calibration after splicing 300 times for 125um fiber and 50 times for 400um fiber.

ARC test/calibration methods(Take SHINHO X-500 as an example):

1. Arc Test

For the technicians who are with rich experience , they can adjust the Arc value to make the discharge get normal as below.

Firstly, put prepared fibers on the left & right holder to test the current discharge strength(normally the ARC strength should between 8 and 10) ;