Fiber Optic Splicing: Tips and Tricks for Beginners | ØY16

Join us today as we work on this home networking system. In this episode we dive into the world of Fibre Splicing, Networking, along with some Theory. Would you like to try Splicing Fibre?

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[xxrtrdxx]

Speaking of fibre being bad for your health, in the early days when fibre shards werent a known hazard, my older colleauges spent a whole week in the cable chamber of a BT exchange jointing cables straight through. They werent aware the shards can pierece the skin, so they were splicing over a large tarpaulin. On the last day they sat down to dress all the joints onto bearers etc, and sat on the tarpaulin. All the hundreds of offcut shards of poor cleaves etc ended up piercing them in the legs and behinds, and they had to go to hospital and sit in a hot vaseline bath for 8 hours to persuade the fibre shards to exit the skin. Fibre and fibre safety has come a long way!!

[xxrtrdxx]

Business fibre jointer in South Wales here, it's nice to see you looking at fibre. Awesome field to work in. I think it would be awesome for you to get into fibre Cory! Expensive to get started, but having a splicer is basically the same as having a money printer!

[Richardincancale]

Back in 1997 my team designed a fibre network for central Paris deployed in the walk-through sewers there. To connect to buildings we left a coil of cable every 200m that could be unwound up the nearby manhole into the back of a van - the humid environment in the sewer is a no-no for fusion splicing!

[jem]

Fiber splicing is not too bad. Doing it inside is heaven compared to trying to get the damn stuff to splice in the cold/rain and wind. It's good to see you learning new stuff. A few times I turned up to a new build and the builders had run a copper cable and didn't know anything about fibre so the copper cable they had run behind all the walls was useless.

[thesteelrodent]

They redid the fibre internet around here like 7-8 years ago, because it's an installation that was originally installed in 2003 and they were modernizing the equipment all the way from the centrals to the customers. The old equipment needed 2 strands for each connection to work, one for Tx and one for Rx, but the newer stuff is able to run something like 100 times faster using only a single strand for both Tx and Rx. They had to swap the connector to make the fibre work with the new boxes, and they brought in a very similar big splicer box to get a clean cut, and were kind enough to explain what they were doing and why, which was really neat because fibre communication is just one of those things that was more or less advertised as magic when I was little and the tech was brand new. Now, I'm on the consumer end and the two-core cable that comes out of the wall is actually quite thick - about the same thickness as a power cord, but it wasn't till the techs showed up to redo it that I realized it's that thick because there's something like 10 layers of insulation to protect the glass cores, and the core inside is amazingly thin. We actually have 2 channels on each core, but only use the one for the internet, and it still amazes me how fast you can chuck data down a hair thin piece of glass (we've got 1000/1000 Mbit in these parts now, which is the fastest consumer line you can get in Denmark)

[alan-freeman]

Just for reference, single mode fibre is often listed as 9/125. The 125 is micrometres is the thickness of the glass and is the size of human hair. The section the light goes down is the 9 micrometre core. That is the black line when looking at the screen of the splice machine!

[alanjones]

Great to see the practical side. 20+ yrs ago I was responsible for the UKs first private telephone network link using fibre. It was instead of 30 BT leased lines with repeaters. We used Pirelli’s preproduction interface boxes and got a whole 2M signal. Not 10 or 100 nevermind Gigabit. It linked two university campus telephone systems with thousands of users. Based on the under sea technology it was a lot bigger. Keep them coming 😊

[herrtomas]

One thing which caught us out in the early days of using fibre in the network is that where RJ45 ports on a switch are auto-sensing, fibre ports are generally not (we used Cisco kit). Depending on who wired for you, you may need to swap over send/receive fibres on the panel! We had two different contractors fitting them opposite ways on the fibre patch panel when extending to a new building. Simple once you know!
And you can buy simple testers to check your fibres - even as simple as a laser torch to shine through.

[vmankay]

The splicer boxes have reduced in size which is pretty cool. I had BT fibre installed 10 years ago and it was a box a little larger that you would hang in front of you with a harness. It's cool to see the technology get smaller and watch the machine align the splices. Really liking this video, not many out there on this especially from the UK.

[danquinn]

Imagine doing a 96 way os2 patch panel, sat at an outside green cabinet in sub zero temperature for about 4 hours in the wind and rain under an umbrella.. Been there, it's no fun.. lol

[xxrtrdxx]

Large fibre cables aren't bad, youll be amazed how quick you get when you get in the swing of it. (Especially if you get a ribbon splicer, it can do 12 splices in one) A tray of 12 splices in 15 mins. Contracting for BT back in the day gave 5 quid a splice, doing a full 144F joint in a day wasnt hard and would land you a good whack.

[dontlookatme]

Upgrading to a thermal jacket stripper will make life a whole lot easier than using the three stage stripper tool. You strip off the jacket and the acrylic layer all in one go, enough to use the alcohol wipes to clean it for cleaving. There is less chance of cutting the fiber(seen in 11:34) and reduce the damage on the cladding on the stripping. The thermal strippers typically require the use of a fiber holding bracket that over all I find better to work with as it reduces you needing to handle the fiber directly. The brackets will also help you not have to fumble with having to put the fiber in the splicer in the right place in those internal holders for fusioning or during the cleaving procedures. The best cleaver I have used is the Sumitomo FC-8R, which allows you to orient the fiber in pretty much anyway you need to cleave it at. It does not need to be set flush on a floor for the cleaver to work well, which some cleavers require to be and leaves you doing things in awkward positions on occasions depending where the fiber is dropped. Used with the fiber bracket holders it makes the cleave go much faster than having to align the fiber for each cleave as the FC-8R will accept the fiber bracket right after you have cleaned it with alcohol. It almost can be used by one hand to set the fiber and cleave it. It is hard to go back to using other cleavers once you have used that one... Using a V-groove or core alignment splicer with separate fiber holders makes live easier as well I would say.

Using three stage tool and common cleaver and splicer without fiber holding brackets
Remove outer jacket -> Remove outer acrylic -> Clean with alcohol pad -> Align fiber in cleaver -> Cleave fiber -> align fiber in fusion splicer and lock with internal holder.

Using Thermal jacket remover with cleaver that accepts fiber bracket holder, and V-groove or core alignment splicer with separate fiber bracket holders.
Place fiber in proper holding bracket -> Use thermal jacket remover(removes jacket and outer acrylic all at once takes about 5-6 seconds) -> Clean with alcohol pad -> put bracket in cleaver -> Cleave -> place fiber bracket in splicer

There is no alignment steps with the 2nd one as the bracket is set to hold the fiber in the optimal location for each procedure. So your not spending time aligning on each step.

We have that splicer shown here in the shop as a backup since it was real cheap, it is the AI-9 model from SignalFire. Although on amazon you will see that its also sold as some other brands who just resell it. The AI-9 is pretty good at manipulating the fiber in the holders to get it into position for the fusion arc even if you are not really that precise of putting them in the internal holders. For the price you pay it is a fairly decent fusion splicer that does the good job at its price point. However, I would warn you that that the app used to control the unit does asks for some strange permissions, such as access to your contacts... It controls a fusion splicer, needing to know the number of your girlfriend or family is not necessary to do its job... If you use this splicer I would suggest you to get a cheap throwaway tablet of some sort to connect to this thing to control it for security reasons.

[nickcuffe]

Great watch Cory! As someone not in the trade and limited knowledge, it was genuinely interesting to watch!

[balenindlovu]

just got certified with the FOA 5 days back, this has been so informative

[davelee]

Years ago, I used to work for a company that laid and repaired undersea fiber cables. The engineers at sea had practically the same equipment. I had a go at it once, my cleaving was, well.. a bit shite and my connection was pretty lossy! Mental to think they'd be doing that stuff at sea. I had FTTP installed the other day so obviously bugged the Openreach engineer loads to see how it's done. It seemed SOO much simpler (and presumably more reliable) that the old copper stuff.

[marktubeie]

This was fantastic to watch Cory as I'm about to have my house kit out with fiber. The joining process is insane! More videos like this I approve bud.

[joshcliffejones]

Its so cool to see how much this has moved on since i was splicing fibre! I had to cut the glass and then polish the ends with multiple different ultra fine grit pads and then glue them into their connectors ready to plug into the fibre trays!

[wmutxve]

Nice intro to splicing! Just a heads up on how the cleaver works - it doesn't actually cut the fibre per se - it scores the glass and literally whacks it to get a cleaner cut than you'd otherwise be able to with snips etc

[swelectricals]

I love this channel already. I hate doing data cables (cat6) but that looks like surgery from the future. Great video.

[ajsnr]

did splicing 25 years ago in the army the kit has come a long way since then our splicer was the size of a medium suitcase and god forbid you got off cuts in the skin, not fun. love the varied content Cory keep it up mate. thanks