Patent ID: 8678675

Claim:
A manufacturing apparatus for producing a protection sleeve, the protection sleeve including a heat shrinkable tube, a hot-melt adhesive tube and a reinforcing rod housed inside the heat shrinkable tube and is contrived to reinforce a fusion spliced portion of an optical fiber, the manufacturing apparatus comprising: a jig contrived to securely hold a plurality of protection sleeves in a parallel arrangement with spaces there-between; and a heating device that has a support frame, a hot air discharge nozzle supported on the support frame and a height adjusting mechanism supported on the support frame with the jig being supported on the height adjusting mechanism, the hot air discharge nozzle being configured to blow hot air at the plurality of protection sleeves, the height adjusting mechanism being configured to set a distance between the plurality of protection sleeves and the hot air discharge nozzle to a first distance at which the heat shrinkable tubes of each of the plurality of protection sleeves are provisionally shrunk such that the adhesive tubes and the reinforcing rods are provisionally held inside the heat shrinkable tubes, and configured to set the plurality of protection sleeves and the hot air discharge nozzle to a second distance that is closer than the first distance and at which the heat shrinkable tubes, the adhesive tubes and the reinforcing rods will be adhered in a localized manner only at a middle portion of each of the plurality of protection sleeves.