Design of an automated fiber pigtail preparation machine

Abstract

Gyroscopes are inertial guidance devices. The first gyroscopes were mechanical and be­cause of there excessive weight and cost, were used only in military and civilian aircraft. As technology improved, gyroscopes found wider applications, not only on aviation, but in submarines and even ground vehicles such as tanks, jeeps, and agricultural machines. Fiber-optic gyroscopes are advantageous over other gyroscope architectures in that they require less maintenance and are potentially much less costly to manufacture. Using current labor-intensive manufacturing technologies, however, they are expensive to pro­ duce and hence have not found wide-spread applications. By improving the associated manufacturing technologies, the cost of the fiber-optic gyroscopes could be dramatically reduced, enabling them to achieve tremendous market infiltration. As part of a DARPA initiative to reduce the cost of fiber optic gyroscopes, the MIT Manufacturing Institute developed a11 automated fiber pigtail preparation machine. This thesis describes the design, development, and fabrication of this machine and summarizes performance.