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BarbaraKobzik

Fiber Optic cable kit

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Hi,
Who knows something about fiber optic repair kits? What can you recommend for splicing, putting connectors on etc? We have to buy one very soon, anything you could recommend?
Thanks a lot,
Barbara
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It's nice to be important, but it's much more important to be nice.

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There's really only one name in the business, Siecor.

There are really only two ways of putting fiber together; put connectors on them and splicing. Connectors are for things that change; a patch bay or a temporary connection. Splicing is for things that should not change. Connectors have quite a bit of loss associated with them, maybe as high as 0.5db per connector. Fusion splicing, on the other hand and if done properly, is very low loss. You can still see it on a meter, but it's very, very low.

I would HIGHLY suggest you get into a class if you're going to do this as a business. http://www.corningcablesystems.com/web/college/traser.nsf/ehtml/fotrain

The initial cost outlay for equipment can be pretty high. It IS possible to rent some of it.
http://www.corningcablesystems.com/web/corp/engserv.nsf/ehtml/eqrent

BTW, there are a couple of different types of fiber (single mode and multi mode) and it's really important that you understand what the system is that you'll be dealing with and what its limitations are. Again, taking some classes can help you there.
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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Thank you very much. It's for our lab technicians. We have a new radome to test our weather radar system, and we need to have fiber connectors all the way from the lab to the radome. So far we just used the standard cables in the lab and test plane and let Boeing do their thing in the aircraft, but now we need to do some cabeling by ourselves.
Thanks a lot again!
Barbara
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It's nice to be important, but it's much more important to be nice.

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I haven't worked with fiber cables in quite a while and have really no official training but I have done about a thousand splices. What we did when we put connector on was to use a pigtail connector and just splice the two fibers together. That way you don't have to mess with the connector assembly at all as the manufacturer have already done that for you. Also like quade said, all splices and connectors have a loss so try to keep them to a minimum. It also depends on how long the cable is gonna be. The longer runs you make the more careful you have to be about keeping everything perfect.
I'm not absolutely sure about what brand we used but i think it was from Siecor.
And like I said, It was a long time ago and I don't really remember any brand names but you should get hold of a tester to measure the total loss of the finished cable. They can even give you the distance to a crack in the cable. The splicer will usually give you the loss for a single splice but nothing beats knowing that the whole cable is OK when trouble shooting a communication problem. Of course it also depends on how long of a run you are gonna make and how easy the cable is to access. For a short cable it might be easier to just replace it than to try and fix it.
And a last word of cation. Don't eat or drink anything when working with fiber cable, if you get splinters from the cable into your body they are impossible to find and can do quite a bit of harm if you are unlucky. Also watch your eyes if you are using infrared lasers, always make sure you are not working on a live fiber. You can permanently damage your eyes without even noticing it.
I'm gonna have a look around and see if I can find any of my old documents if I still have them. Might be some list of the equipment we used.
And again like I said. I have no official training only know what I learned from my colleagues. I might be completely wrong in some of the things and things might have changes since then...

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Thank you.

If anybody could recommend a certain kit he has good experience with, that would be really helpful. So far we have heard prices from 2k to 12k, not sure what really makes sense to have.

Barbara
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It's nice to be important, but it's much more important to be nice.

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