Return to Virginia Business - July 2002

Pass the polish, please

Innovative Fiber Technologies of Norfolk is set to transform the high-tech industry - not with yet another new gadget that's smaller and faster than ever, but with a polishing cloth for fiber-optic cable connectors.

Even the latest advances in technology haven't negated the need for polishing cloths. Fiber optics are glued into connectors with an epoxy that hardens and becomes coarse, requiring a special cloth coarse enough to sand down the connectors without damaging the fibers.

Up until now, the process has been done by hand or by machine with Mylar film. The traditional Mylar sheet works, but it is easily wrinkled and can only be used once, says Dave Edwards, vice president of WR Systems, Innovative Fiber's parent company in Fairfax. Innovative Fiber's cloth product can be used 15 to 20 times before being discarded. Plus, the quality of the polish is better. "In most applications, it only takes one polish," Edwards says.

"Our products allow you to use a single cloth to take you from start to finish," explains Bill Woodward, senior engineer with WR Systems and the main developer of the new cloth. Woodward started teaching fiber optics at a local college in 1992, overseeing students who made connectors. "I would see what people would do right, and see what people would do wrong, " he says. "The way they were polishing fibers before we came along worked just fine," he says, with one caveat: "A lot of times when you're polishing, you'll actually break the glass and have to throw it away."

Woodward wanted to develop a method in which his students could make good connectors as quickly as possible, and in less than a year he had his new cloth. "With this product, students build considerably more connectors. Performance measurements are considerably better than what we'd get with Mylar film," Woodward says.

So far, the company hasn't launched a huge advertising campaign, but it has sent out samples to various manufacturers and the Navy for review. "There's been a great response from most of the users," Edwards says. "This is the only product that exists of its kind."

- Leila Marija Ugincius