POF Image Guide
An Image Guide is a rod composed of thousands of individual plastic optical fibers. The fibers are bonded as a single optical element for transmitting an image from one end of the rod to the other. All images transmitted through the rod retain their original spatial properties. Fiber optic image guides are also called coherent fiber bundles (as opposed to non-coherent fiber bundles that transfer light, but no optical spatial properties). Image guides are often round in shape, but can be made to any shape.
Glass fiber image guides are available in rigid and flexible versions. Most glass image guides are custom designs, built to customer specifications and available in very high resolution. Plastic image guides are standard products with a specified shape, outer diameter and pixel size. Production set up costs for plastic image guides is very high. Plastic material image guides lack the optical clarity and resolution of their glass counterparts.
Industrial Fiber Optics previously sold image guides constructed of acrylic and polystyrene optical core materials. Acrylic cores had better optical clarity and bending properties, but were more expensive. Polystyrene cores are lower priced and have lower optical clarity, but nonetheless are entirely adequate for some applications.
At this time we are unable to sell off-the-shelf multi-fiber image guides because our source of polystyrene bundles has ceased making bundles and is not likely to resume production. Our source of acrylic material bundles is Mitsubishi Rayon and they are evaluating existing product line and evaluating customer inputs for a new product portfolio. If you have a requirement, please contact us. We will work with you to try and meet the needs of your application.
