MATEC Electronics completes your fiber optical needs both for Physical Contact Connectors as well as Expanded Beam Connectors. What is an Expanded Beam fiber optic connector? Expanded Beam uses a lens in front of the fiber to collimate the light coming out of the fiber. The lens expands the size of the beam from 9 um to 285 um for SM. Expanded Beam connectors have distinct advantages and disadvantages compared to Physical Contact connectors. The use of expanded beam optic interfaces results in reduced signal loss due to contamination at the
optic interface. The lens design also facilitates cleaning and because the light path travels over an airgap, there is no physical contact. Lack of physical contact potentially eliminates the mechanical wear
found in physical contact connectors, allowing more connector mating cycles. Below figure shows a typical
ball lens expanded beam fiber optic connection system.
Expanded beam technology is used in several military and
commercial applications where frequent mating and unmating may expose the optical interfaces to
contamination. Several recently introduced lower cost expanded beam connectors are targeted at
commercial medical applications, where reliability and thousands of mating cycles are required. While expanded beam connector products are not as diverse as physical contact connectors, there are
multiple types of expanded beam connectors.
TACBeam® – MIL-DTL-83526
MIL-PRF-83526 Qualified is hermaphroditic fiber optic connector,
allowing the concatenation of multiple cable assemblies to support varying
distance requirements.
CTOS
The CTOS is an expanded beam connector and a hermaphroditic 2 &
4-channel optical interface. This technology uses a collimating lenses.
AXOS
AXOS fiber optic expanded beam is a miniature, hermaphroditic and cost
effective alternative to other expanded beam connectors.
TFOCA-XBT®
The TFOCA-XBT4™ is the next logical step, integrating expanded beam
technology into the most popular harsh environment fiber optic connector in the
world.
THDM Series MT Connector System
The THDM is a MIL-PRF-28876 derived mechanical transfer (MT) rugged
fiber optic connector for military and aerospace applications.
