Attachment 1 - Salient Characteristics.docx

This is a Salient Characteristics attachment defining the minimum specifications and technical requirements for a silica fiber optic draw tower procurement by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Department of the Navy. The equipment must be a fully turnkey system capable of drawing various types of optical fibers, including step index multimode, graded index multimode, single mode, microstructured photonic crystal fibers, and microstructured hollow core fibers.

The draw tower system must fit within a compact footprint of 1.2 meters wide by 1.2 meters deep by 9 meters tall and include a resistive water-cooled furnace with maximum temperature of 2300°C, preform feeding mechanism with 1.5-meter minimum length capability, and process speeds of 1 to 200 meters per minute. The system requires four independent channels of preform pressurization and vacuum control (±500 millibar inert gas and -900 millibar vacuum), two independent fiber coating systems with 365-nanometer LED UV curing capability at 12 watts per centimeter, and dual fiber coating measurement systems with data logging. The equipment must accommodate preform diameters from 10 to 50 millimeters and produce fibers ranging from 80 to 1000 micrometers in diameter with ±0.1 micrometer tolerance. Additional requirements include fiber draw tension monitoring (0-500 grams minimum), simultaneous fiber tapering with pressure variation capability, automatic closed-loop diameter control, and software access with source code availability to permit NRL to make future in-house hardware additions and modifications that may involve ITAR-controlled functionality. All specifications are subject to modification pending market survey and engineering review by NRL personnel.