Seven “Sins” for Fiber Installation
Compared with copper cable, the fiber cable is easy to break down especially during installation. There are some points are easy to be neglected during fiber installation to degrade the network.
- Without cleaning before fiber fusion
It is extremely important to clean the fiber after stripping the jacket which might have debris and contamination, do this before fusion rather than afterward. The cleaning after fusion would raise dirty on the endface, it leads to an extra burden for the splicer, shorten electrode lifetime, and lower downer the mechanical strength with the extra loss.
When cleaning the bare fiber, inflammable and rapid evaporated cleaning fluid without water in a sealed container without refilling to avoid cross-contamination is recommended. Note: The fiber is clean when there is humming during cleaning.
- Use improper cleave tool
The cleaved endface has a great impact on the fusion result. An automatic cleaver can help to ensure a qualified fiber endface. As to the handheld cleave tools, necessary cleaning is required especially the strippers. Carefully cleaning the oil and dust on the jacket and tight tubes is very important.
- Without machine calibration before using the fusion splicer
Experienced fusion splicer will keep attention to maintain the cleaning of V groove and cleaver, and also may notice that no matter how they work on mentioned details, the fusion result is not so good. Some might due to fiberglass quality, some might be caused by a dirty electrode, or have wrong judgment. Calibration for the fusion machine especially the arc and electricity intensity often requires adjustment to ensure the good mechanical and fiber characteristics. Electricity, atmosphere density, humidity of the fusion splice machine might require several times test to have self-adjustment to have good performance
- Fiber slight bend
Extra pressure on the fiber(might too tight when fixing) or equipment corner cabling will cause fiber bend which leads to lower down the transmission quality, while such problem only can be tested out with OTDR. For fiber fusion splicing, a transparent sleeve is recommended to avoid movement and pressure after splicing when moved.
- Too much fiber bend
All the fiber has its bend radius which should be not exceeded when deploying the fiber to avoid fiber break. Here might be the reasons:
1, tight slack loop and installed too small base or hole. 2, aerial cable installation with buckles to fixing the cable 3, splice tray. When proper protection sleeve is used to close the splice tray without leaving enough space for bend radius.
Fiber bend only can be tested with OTDR at wavelength 1550, 1625nm for SM, MM at 1310mm.
- Re-usage wipes
Used wipes are already contaminated with oil or dust, if reuse it, other connectors will also be contaminated, a high modulus wipe is recommended without too much cost. Or you can have the smaller size with clean packed low modulus and use one time only. Or contamination will lead to more cost.
- No inspection and cleaning of the connector before connecting
The connectors are the parts extremely easily have dust or oil, so connector inspection and cleaning is a must before installation and the cost of cleaning before installation is much lower than site maintenance.
All the above details are small details but easily neglected to degrade the network or lead to a network fault. Such problems can be avoided when following the standard fiber installation procedure.
A range of quality cleaning tools, hand tools, cleavers, splicing protection sleeves, and other equipment for your fiber network installation or deployment is available from Fiber Zip Technology.