Hello, everyone!
Today, I want to continue to explain a new topic – ODN engineering and maintenance. Now, I will continue to explain ODN engineering. Today, the topic is fiber splicing and termination.
Optical fiber can be connected by fusion splicing, mechanical splicing, and optical connectors. Now the topic is fusion splicing. Before splicing, it is necessary to prepare the optical fibers. We need special tools for it. These are cable slitter, drop stripper, Kevlar cutter, tube cutter, fiber stripper, fiber cleaver, wipes, and alcohol. There are more specific tools, but these are the most important.
Staff that works with these tools must know them well, that they have completed training in handling these tools. The tool is checked, cleaned, and returned after use to be ready for the next use.
The first step in preparing optical fibers for splicing is to remove the jacket of the optical cable. With classic optical cables, this is done using a cable slitter. A drop stripper is used for drop optical cables. Once the jacket is removed, the next step is to remove the Kevlar. This is done using a Kevlar cutter. After that, we released the PVC pipes.
After that, the PVC pipe is opened, for which a tube cutter is used. The next step is to clean the optical fibers from the gel. The primary buffer coating is then removed from each optical fiber. This is accomplished using a fiber stripper. The optical fiber is then cleaned using wipes and 98% alcohol or special cleaning fluid. This is important to ensure a quality fusion splice. And the final step is to cut the fiber at an angle of 90 degrees. This is done using a fiber cleaver. This is such a very important step, on which the quality of the fusion splice depends. If the optical fiber is badly cut as a result of incorrect use of the fiber cleaver or a bad knife on the fiber cleaver, the splicer will not accept the optical fiber or we will get a splice with a large attenuation. Therefore, special attention should be paid. If the knife on the fiber cleaver is bad, it should be rotated. He has several positions, and after it is determined that he is bad, he must change the position for cutting.
This is the end of this article. I will continue to explain this topic in the next article >> ODN Engineering and Maintenance (21).
Thank you!
