Optical couplers and step-index fibers fabricated using FDM 3D printers.

Step-index optical fiber preforms are manufactured and drawn into fibers using low-cost consumer-grade fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printers with no other specialist tooling. The fibers are fabricated from polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG) cladding with an acrylonitrile buatadiene styrene (ABS) core, resulting in V < 2.4 after drawing.