Has anyone played with fiberoptics?

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saxman242

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Looking at designing/printing a macro ring light for my camera similar to the saga units like so:
sa-272_2.jpg


but with printed tubes for the fiberoptics to run through. Curious if anyone has any experience with trying to snake fiberoptics through prints. Would either fdm or sla the parts
 
Actually.. do you need to print the tubes. When I was playing with fiber optics I purchase audio cable that has a thick bundle ready for use.
 
Actually.. do you need to print the tubes. When I was playing with fiber optics I purchase audio cable that has a thick bundle ready for use.
I was thinking more along the lines of printing of monolithic block with channels for the fiberoptic tubes to snake through for getting them to go where I want.
 
Yep, could be possible and layer in the fiberlines before the printing is completed. But What are the benefits of this?
 
Yep, could be possible and layer in the fiberlines before the printing is completed. But What are the benefits of this?
More robust part as the fiber optics aren't doing any of the structural support.
 
I think that would be a difficult print. However, filament is cheap; give it a shot! Personally, I'd go with some other kind of sleeving. Standard (with glue) heatshrink or maybe carbon fiber cable wraps that are sold for custom personal computer mods. Neither are completely rigid, but most high quality fiber isn't rigid.

If you're making your own fibers, spend some significant time lapping the ends of the fibers. You'll be surprised what a significant difference this can make in light transmission.
 
I printed a few parts to route fiber optics, once upon a time. I'll start by pointing out these were the first (real-use/not for fun) parts I ever designed to be additively manufactured, and the first that I wasn't doing the printing myself or able to iterate. I did the design, shopped them out to a print house, and paid dearly (several grand each) for them because they were pretty large. If I were to attempt it now, I'm confident it would work out a lot better.

I had a really hard time getting anything to come close to even holding on tight, much less providing any type of seal. The fiber optics I was using were very high end, and very consistent in OD. My design parameters dictated a two-piece clamshell to clamp the fiber optics in place. The material shrinkage from one side of the clamp to the other was extremely inconsistent, and varied pretty widely from hole to hole. There were about 12 light pipes running through the clamp, and every hole on three of the clamps was a dramatically different fit. Some had to be drilled out, some were horribly oversized. Ultimately, the pieces went in the trash and I came up with an ugly Rube Goldberg solution for free, and counted myself lucky to not lose my job over the money wasted haha.

Like I said, I guarantee somebody who has half a clue about printing could do a far better job of the design than I did. If you also control the printer, you'll be more able to control the results as well.

I do think you'll have a hard time printing anything that will seal right off the printer. If anything, I'd print the holes slightly oversized and epoxy your fiber optics in place after the fact. This is how we do it to make vacuum tight passthroughs in aluminum, pulling moderate vacuum to a few tens of mTorr.
 
I think that would be a difficult print. However, filament is cheap; give it a shot! Personally, I'd go with some other kind of sleeving. Standard (with glue) heatshrink or maybe carbon fiber cable wraps that are sold for custom personal computer mods. Neither are completely rigid, but most high quality fiber isn't rigid.

If you're making your own fibers, spend some significant time lapping the ends of the fibers. You'll be surprised what a significant difference this can make in light transmission.
Filament? Nah... This would likely get the SLA treatment (although I'm sure I'd do a test run or two on my fdm machine).

The fiber optics I have have a sheath around them that offers some protection for running them, but yes, will definitely need to lap the end.
 
We built a fiber-optic ring for our set up - it definitely lights up the subject, however, there were no shadows to give it additional depth and interest. if you have a 2nd strobe, you can use that to add some additional lighting/shadow to your picture.

We built our fiber optic ring using the following:
  • 3.5" ABS Drain Plug - this is the part that threads inside the drain pipe. Drill out the square top such that it is wide enough to fit around your camera lens
  • 2" ABS Drain cap - this size was determined base on what would fit over our strobe head - in our case a Sea & Sea YS-01 strobe. It also works nicely on a YS-D2J strobe on the inside of the ring
  • We seven 7, ~4mm fiber optic cables around the ring. We found this gave us plenty of light. To ensure each fiber head was straight, we tie-wrapped each one in place.
  • We used threaded loc-line to secure the 7 of the fiber optic cables to the drain cap
We found that a shorter F/O length was ultimately easier to work with. On our first dive, the F/O cables were too long, so we used our dive blade and cut them to a more manageable size. We originally planned to attach this to the lens, but after using this a couple of times determined that the friction between the fibers and the port was all that was needed.

If you are to 3D print this, then you will probably have a better chance with the F/O coming out straight, although, you may still need to use tie-wraps. You will also likely end up with a cleaner finished product

Here are some photos of the process we went through in building our ring strobe. Maybe it will give you some ideas. We'll be interested to see what you come up with.

DSC09393.jpg
DSC09395.jpg
DSC09402.jpg
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This is great to see. Wrangling the fiberoptics and getting them to behave is definitely a large part of why I want to print the channels for the fiberoptics. Hard for them to point in the wrong direction when they're fully constrained.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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