Design of an automated fiber pigtail preparation machine

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.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1997

Author dc:creator

• Å iÅ man, Güvenç S., 1971-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Andre Sharon.

• Mechanical Engineering

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9390

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9390