Glass Ball Lens – A Gyration In Technology

By Author: Leo Turpin
Total Articles: 100
Comment this article

The technology has gone too far and turned much impossibility into mere possibilities. The advancements now are still temporary and the work of excellence to improve goes on like this. Improvement is the only answer to the challenges we face and for this we have to put fair amount of work which takes us from the depth of the ocean to the heights of the sky. Much such advancement has come into existence in the field of communications. We have seen the evolution from copper cables to co-axial cables. But still we lack in speed and efficiency. The losses are never negligible making us to keep on searching for other means. The recent advancement of optical fibers solved all the problems and made us to rely on it completely. The communication done through optical fibers is very fast. It is done in the form of light. The losses in an optical fiber are zero. However the problem arises when we are coupling two optical fibers. We need to couple the optical fibers in order to communicate with the longer distances. But the actual problem here is the coupling losses. These losses can result in poor reliability and effectiveness. For this ...
... we need to adapt the glass ball which act as the fiber optic connectors. But the actual problem here is the coupling losses.

Great care has to be taken while manufacturing the glass balls. A small defect can make it totally useless to serve the purpose. In order to avoid this we have to adapt to new technologies that manufacture a perfect sphere. However a perfect glass ball can never be manufactured. The best thing we can do about this is to manufacture a glass ball that is of certain error which can be accepted. For this the glass ball lenses are set certain standards by AFBMA and are certified to use only when they meet the criteria. Any little deviation from the criteria may affect the output of the entire application and so are rejected. The Ball lens and Half ball lens are found useful in several other applications like Bar code scanning, Ball check valves and bearing applications. The tiniest dirt element is more than enough to spoil the functioning of this glass ball lens and so packing them is done in a very careful manner to prevent this. Along with glass balls some other balls that are made of sapphire, Ruby, ceramic are also found useful for the same purpose. The tiniest dirt element is more than enough to spoil the functioning of this glass ball lens and so packing them is done in a very careful manner to prevent this.