Fiberoptic for Beginners?

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Ravenvalor

Ravenvalor

Senior Member
Location
Triad region of NC
Occupation
Electrician
Hello,

A customer would like for me to run and terminate a 400' line of fiberoptic cable for him in his plant. Is this something that takes months of experience to do or is it something that I can pick up easily? I took a fiberoptic course about 15 - years ago and about 4 - years ago I cleaved and terminated a swimming pool fiberoptic cable but I have never done network fiberoptic cabling.

Thanks,
 
Ravenvalor said:
Hello,

A customer would like for me to run and terminate a 400' line of fiberoptic cable for him in his plant. Is this something that takes months of experience to do or is it something that I can pick up easily? I took a fiberoptic course about 15 - years ago and about 4 - years ago I cleaved and terminated a swimming pool fiberoptic cable but I have never done network fiberoptic cabling.

Thanks,
Click to expand...

I have never done it myself, but a look at the instructions on the terminator kits should give you some idea.
There is a big difference between multi-mode (thick) and single-mode (thin and therefore more critical to align) fiber. A high speed network may be using single-mode fiber since it can carry more data longer distances without distortion (but with higher losses). Find that out first.

It is a lot more picky than a fiber optic bundle just used for lighting.
 
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If you took a course 15 years ago you should have a good idea what's involved. If anything connectors have become easier to install since then. Keep in mind that you can get your cable pre-terminated and tested for a nominal charge above what the cable costs. Probably the way I would go unless you want to spend some more money on tools and basic test equipment.

-Hal
 
Ravenvalor said:
Hello,

A customer would like for me to run and terminate a 400' line of fiberoptic cable for him in his plant. Is this something that takes months of experience to do or is it something that I can pick up easily? I took a fiberoptic course about 15 - years ago and about 4 - years ago I cleaved and terminated a swimming pool fiberoptic cable but I have never done network fiberoptic cabling.

Thanks,
Click to expand...

Network FO cabling and termination is less forgiving than lighting FO.
In my opinion, it is not worth making the investment in termination tooling and test equipment for a single 400' job.
It is more economical to order ready to pull, custom length, pre-terminated cable assemblies.
Make certain of the length, termination type, fiber count, diameter, jacket specs, performance specs and optical specs before ordering.
Avoid the lesser known fiber optic cable and connector name brands, there has been a lot of cheap(inferior quality) asian made cable being sold in the USA.
If the installation has to be performance proven or diagnosed, it is by far less expensive to rent the test equipment.
 
Rampage_Rick said:
I install Unicam brand connectors. They're pretty easy once you've done a couple. Bought the tooling off eBay for under $300 and then the connectors run about $20 each.
Click to expand...

I have not experienced good results using single mode LC or ST UniCam Connectors.
What are your installed UniCam connector loss figures for 50 um single mode?
What brand/model cleaver are you using?
 
50 um is multimode. Singlemode is 8-9 um.

I've only done one job with singlemode Unicam; I believe they were the angled-polish varient. As I recall the connector loss was 0.6 - 0.7 dB. Not great, but acceptable.

It's not really worth it to put connectors on singlemode, you're always better off to buy connectors with factory-installed pigtails and fusion splice (or buy pre-terminated cables) The connector losses are much better, around 0.1 dB

No need for singlemode for a 400' run anyways. Higher cost for both the fiber and the transceivers.
 
I agree with others here that you are best off buying a pre-terminated cable if this is a one-off job. The investment is tools and the time to do it right is probably not worth it if this is something you are not going to do on a regular basis.

My other suggestion to to be careful when pulling the cable if its going through a conduit. I have seen people pull pre-terminated cables with a cable grip and the stretching of the jacket caused extremely high losses. I remember one time when the run was only about 250 ft with 2 or 3 90 degree bends and there was something like 15-17dB of loss on a cable that should have had nearly no loss. The problem with pre-terminated cables is that you dont have access to the kevlar strands to pull on which is what you use when the cable is unterminated.
 
LOL...

LOL...

Dude... you wanna play rookie with Fiber?

ok... fail yourself unless you want to buy a cleaver and fusion splicer at roughly $30,000 and a certifier OTDR at roughly $20,000.

Hire people trained in fiber to splice this for you before you jack up your customer's cables. At worst, you'll totally ruin it. At best, you'll make a splice with a ton of loss in dB.

This ain't like a wire-nut or crimp-splice, friend. Get someone who knows what they're doing to save you the embarrassment and cost of failure.

Fiber is easy if you know what you're doing and have the tools. You posses neither.
 
Probably the best way to get it done would be to find a local company that has the equipment and get a quote from them for the Termination / testing portion, install the Fiber yourself and contract them to finish it.

Your choice should be an Armored Plenum OM3 Multi-Mode (10 Gig). You also should have a local company that rents testing & Termination equipment but if you've never done it then you're asking for Egg on your face and risking a customer in today's economy does not make sense.

Also there is nothing wrong with unicam connectors, they work fine. Although we rarely use them since epoxy polish connectors are a much better solution and a third of the cost of unicams.
 
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