Patent ID: 11970419
Assignee: THE UNIVERSITY COURT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Field: Other special machines (Mechanical engineering)
Classification: CPC C | IPC C

Claim 0:
1. A method of forming an imaging fibre apparatus comprising:
arranging core rods and cladding rods to form at least one primary stack, each primary stack of the at least one primary stack comprising a plurality of core rods and cladding rods arranged in a primary stack arrangement thereby to form a plurality of core regions within a cladding region wherein the cladding rods comprise capillary tubes such that the cladding region comprises at least in part an air cladding region;
performing a drawing process to form a plurality of drawn stacks from the at least one primary stack wherein each of the plurality of drawn stacks have a selected shape such that the plurality of drawn stacks stack together in a desired secondary stack arrangement wherein the selected shape comprises at least one of a square, a rectangle, a rhombus, a parallelogram, a hexagon, and a regular polygon;
stacking the plurality of drawn stacks together in the desired secondary stack arrangement to form a secondary stack;
wherein the primary stack arrangement comprises at least a partial outer layer of cladding rods thereby to provide separation between core regions of respective adjacent stacks of the secondary stack; and
performing at least one further drawing process to form the imaging fibre apparatus from the secondary stack.