Fiber Optic Manufacturing: Corning to ABB YuMi

Fiber optic manufacturing is busy again, because the data centers built for AI need huge amounts of glass fiber and the connectors that join it. In September Verizon agreed to buy more than 80 million miles of fiber from Corning. This post follows the trade from the first low loss fiber made at Corning in 1970, through draw towers and hand splicing, to the connector and cable lines that AI demand is now stretching. It also looks at where ABB robots such as YuMi, the IRB 1100, the IRB 1300 and the FlexPicker could fit in.

Yellow overhead trays carrying fiber cables above network racks. Photo: Robert.Harker / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

How glass fiber went from a lab target to hand made cable

In the mid 1960s Charles Kao and George Hockham at Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in Britain argued that glass fiber could become a practical communication medium if its loss fell below 20 decibels per kilometer. Most of the loss, they said, came from impurities that could be removed, so the answer was very pure silica. The best glass of the day lost far more light than that. Kao received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009 for this work.

Charles K. Kao receiving an honorary degree from Princeton University in 2004. Photo: David Dobkin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Corning reached the target in 1970. Researchers Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, Peter Schultz and Frank Zimar made a fiber with a loss of 17 dB per kilometer by doping silica with titanium, and a few years later they got to 4 dB per kilometer with germanium dioxide in the core. The basic method has not changed much since. A thick glass rod called a preform is built with a carefully controlled refractive index, its tip is heated in a draw tower, and the fiber is pulled out as a thin strand under controlled tension.

Corning Incorporated's offices and the Little Joe Tower in Corning, New York, 2021. Photo: J. Passepartout / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Drawing was a machine process, but turning fiber into working links took skilled hands. Technicians stripped the coating, cleaved the glass and joined fibers by hand, and later used fusion splicers that melt two ends together with an electric arc. Connectors were made at benches, where the fiber was glued into a ceramic ferrule and its end face polished until light passed cleanly, since a badly finished end face scatters light and adds loss. The first metropolitan fiber cable went into service in Turin in 1977, developed with Corning and the CSELT research center in Italy.

A US government photo of fiber optic cables, captured in 1980. Photo: Donald Huebler, National Archives and Records Administration via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Why AI data centers are straining fiber and connector lines

The AI building boom has made fiber hard to get. On 8 September 2026 Verizon announced a multi year, multi billion dollar deal for Corning to supply more than 80 million miles of high density fiber between 2027 and 2032, for broadband and for links between data centers. Light Reading listed the deals that came before it. Meta signed a multiyear agreement with Corning in January, Corning said in May it would raise its US fiber output by more than 50 percent with an investment from Nvidia, and Amazon signed its own deal in June.

A silica fiber preform, the glass rod that is heated in a draw tower and pulled into fiber. Photo: AndreyTheSparrow / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Each AI cluster needs thousands of short, dense fiber links between servers and switches, and every link ends in connectors. In September Corning completed a specification for a multicore fiber aimed at AI data centers, and Molex announced its VersaBeam Mini optical interconnect for the same market. A lot of the work around these parts is delicate handling: feeding tiny ferrules, pressing them into holders, routing fiber into trays and testing each end. Robots can take some of it, and the people who keep the finished halls running face similar limits, as our post on data center maintenance explains.

A technician fusion splices optical fiber by hand for a broadband upgrade in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, 2015. Photo: Lance Cheung, U.S. Department of Agriculture via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

ABB has at least one documented example. Radiall, a French connector maker, built a flexible line for fiber optic connectors in which an ABB YuMi collaborative robot picks a ceramic ferrule and a metal ferrule holder from two Asyril feeders and places them under a press for assembly. The robot does the picking and placing, and the press does the joining. Radiall makes many custom variants, so it wanted quick changeovers and no damage to delicate parts. Its head of technological development, Eric Milhet, said the project combined "highly innovative component feeding systems" with "a collaborative robot." Asyril published the case in 2018.

ABB's dual arm YuMi IRB 14000, the robot model Radiall used on its connector line, here beside a lab technician. Photo: ABB

Where fiber and connector automation goes next

As volumes rise, more steps around the connector could move from benches to robot cells. ABB's IRB 1100 is a compact six axis arm built for small part assembly and testing, and the IRB 1300 handles heavier parts quickly in a small footprint. Arms like these could load polishing machines, move connectors into test stations and handle cable ends, though ABB has announced no such fiber project. Cells like these are usually laid out and checked first in RobotStudio, which helps when one crushed ferrule ruins a part.

An ABB IRB 1300 small industrial robot with an operator holding the FlexPendant. Photo: ABB

Finished patch cords and trunk cables also have to be coiled, bagged and boxed in large numbers. ABB's IRB 360 FlexPicker picks small items from moving conveyors at high speed, and a similar packing cell could serve a cable plant, with a camera finding each item on the belt. Earlier in the line it gets harder. Bare fiber is thinner than a hair and breaks easily, so threading it into ferrules and routing it into trays still relies on people. Wire harness assembly has the same trouble, since flexible cables defeat simple grippers there too.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots packing small items at high speed. Photo: ABB

For engineers and students, fiber optic plants are a good place to watch automation move down the line. Long contracts such as Verizon's give makers the volume that justifies connector assembly, testing and packing cells. Cost is still the first obstacle. Handling thin glass also needs vision and force sensing, and plants need technicians who can run lines where people and robots share the work. The same factories make the fiber that ends up in home broadband, so buyers at home have a stake in how fast this goes.

A packed single mode fiber patch cord with blue SC connectors, ready to ship. Photo: Asurnipal / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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