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With my new method, the sci-fi guide is still twisted right in front and left at the rear, but the twisting force is applied only at the rear. The fibers are held against the wheel with more force, so polishing goes faster.
With my new method, the sci-fi guide is still twisted right in front and left at the rear, but the twisting force is applied only at the rear. The fibers are held against the wheel with more force, so polishing goes faster.
3/14: I ran a fourth set of tests on light guide Bundle 401 with a middle fiber pushed back from the regular alignment to test how much results change when fibers are misaligned.
I also continued polishing the sci-fi bundle with 400 grit, and things went wrong while I was polishing. At some point I noticed that I had suddenly run almost out of polishing room on one end of the bundle. I had around 0.005" to go before the fibers would no longer be in contact with the sandpaper. That was startling because my micrometer measurements indicated that I needed to take off 0.04" or more to reach the target length for sci-fis. I thought the collar might be too narrow and I might need to use a piece of cardboard to bring the collar and the fibers closer to the wheel. Otherwise, with only 0.005" left I might not be able to polish adequately with the 1000 grit and finer grits.
However, before trying anything with cardboard I turned the collar around and began to polish the other end. Again the progress seemed very rapid until I noticed that the end with 0.005" left had changed. Now instead of barely sticking out beyond the collar it looked longer than the end I was polishing. Then I realized that the fibers were slipping back in the collar as I was polishing. Immediately I tightened the screws in the collar. They were indeed loose enough for the fibers to slip.
This slipping was a setback in polishing the bundle because it meant that the fibers were still not all the same length. The end of the bundle looked flat on the side I happened to be polishing, but the opposite end was uneven with some fibers sticking out farther than others. However, with around 0.04" left to remove, I had hope to correct the situation. The uneven end did not look too bad, and after some more polishing that took off another 0.02", that end looked flat again and the fibers did not seem to slip.