The VFI Optical Fiber End-Face Interferometer from Arden Photonics

The VFI is an interferometric inspection system specifically designed for checking the surface quality and flatness of your cleaved, polished or lensed fibers. The VFI interferometer has proved itself in Research, Production and QA over and over and the feedback from users indicates that they value these features -

1) Superb optical quality - the VFI will give you high quality images of the ends of optical fibers to enable you to estimate their quality and flatness. You can see for yourself some interferograms taken using the system. Click on the image to the right to see more pictures taken using the VFI. Using a front panel switch you can select the two modes of operation - inspect and fringe - so you can check the flatness and the end quality of your cleaved, polished or lensed fiber end with one fiber insertion. This means reduced testing time.

Arden pride themselves on the crisp end-face images which show every defect and on the high contrast fringe patterns which make it easy to estimate end angles. The 5Mpixel camera in the VFI helps to show every detail and gives ample digital zoom capability.

2) Purpose designed fiber handling - the range and flexibility of the fiber handling is crucial to the concept of the VFI. Arden's own fiber holders make the VFI easy to use and accurate; third party adaptor plates help you integrate VFI inspection and interferometery into your critical cleaving and polishing operations. Arden's holders can take fibers with diameters from 125µm to 1200µm, so you won't need multiple pieces of equipment to see all your fiber types properly.

3) Flexible software - the VFI comes with an efficient software package which enables you to grab, save, and print images. This gives you the ability to record vital data and produce QA reports for internal use or to supplyto customers. The report generator enables users to include up to 20 cleave images in one report along with comments. Other features include - intensity line profile, intensity histogram, auto-optimisation of intensity, endangle estimation, psuedo-color rendering, review stored images.

All the software is written in-house by Arden's engineers. Arden has a track record of adding software features suggested by customers and will continue to do that, so you can be sure that Arden's products will stay up-to-date with the latest standards and algorithms.