Fibre termination kit

Stonedofmoo · 21 Sep 2011 at 07:41

Hi guys

Can anyone recommend a place I can get a fibre termination kit, suitable for making LC/SC cables up. Ideally with a multi cure oven, I don't want to make them with those glues that set in seconds

We got a quote from one company and it was outrageous, something like £1300 without the oven or the fibre microscope to check the quality, and they're the expensive bits!

I'm either looking for a kit that contains it all, or a supplier we can trust not to rip us off.

Any suggestions?

#Chri5# · 21 Sep 2011 at 08:45

Wild card - I got an e-mail about this Senko kit last week. I've not looked in to it properly but the e-mail said £5.50 each, though I guess that doesn't include the tool kit...

Curiosityx · 22 Sep 2011 at 14:04

Fiber termination equipment is expensive because its a highly delicate and precise operation which requires skill and experience to perform correctly.

The money spent employing a fiber technician to do the job properly far underweighs the cost of purchasing the equipment yourself.

I can recommend several companies who we have had long term relationships with, workmanship is always excellent.

Stonedofmoo · 22 Sep 2011 at 16:57

Thanks, but we do everything in house. Why pay someone else to do something we can do ourselves.

SpeedFreak · 22 Sep 2011 at 17:29

Stonedofmoo said:
Thanks, but we do everything in house. Why pay someone else to do something we can do ourselves.

But you are asking on OCUK, implying that you don't have the inhouse expertese :confused:

Stonedofmoo · 22 Sep 2011 at 19:46

I was asking for a suitable location to get a kit, not how to do it. Kits range greatly in price and quality and it's important to get the right one. I was asking on OCUK just on the off chance a network technician in a similar situation might be able to recommend one

kiteloopy · 22 Sep 2011 at 20:51

Try greenwoods communications.

They sell fibre kit but also have a decent engineers if you want to outsource.

We have engineers....doesn't stop us outsourcing. Fibre work is a skill.

Carpediem · 22 Sep 2011 at 21:08

Id give Auriga Europe a ring to see what they can do for you.

Kona* · 22 Sep 2011 at 21:36

It's not going to be cheap if you want to do it in-house, most of us at work are trained for Installation, Splicing & Testing by Fujikura. We have two fusion splicers and as someone else said, they are really not cheap - you would be better off contacting a local company who are qualified for this type of work as it takes a lot of practice to get it right.

bigredshark · 22 Sep 2011 at 22:06

£1300 is a bargain for decent kit. As everybody else has said, you'd be plain silly to do it in house, even if it wasn't cheaper to outsource to specialists I'd still do it because it's what they do all day, every day so they're much better at it than anybody in house who does a handful a week. Put it this way, I run a global backbone network, I've almost certainly got more and better resources at my disposal and I wouldn't dream of bothering to do it in house.

Magic_x_uk · 22 Sep 2011 at 22:53

O/T
but why is it expensive? how exactly is it done?

I am sure it is very skilled, I am just curious of how it is done and what is used.

bigredshark · 22 Sep 2011 at 23:22

Magic_x_uk said:
O/T
but why is it expensive? how exactly is it done?

I am sure it is very skilled, I am just curious of how it is done and what is used.

There are two things in question, putting connectors on the ends of cables, which is a matter of attaching the connector and then polishing the end of the fibre. Various techniques for attaching them, epoxy requires an oven or time to cure, hot melt requires an oven but is quicker, a few quick setting glue based methods too. Bit of a faff and then you need to polish the fibre ends and check them, the kit just adds up here, oven to cure, microscope for inspection etc. If you must do it in house then I'd say hot melt is the easiest and most reliable method for amateurs.

Then there's in-line one connector joins, or splices. It's not terribly complex, you just align and then join the two ends...but because it's optical signals and the actual cores are very small, it's a high precision job, you have to polish the ends of the fibres before hand then align them precisely. Every connection in an optical path causes some light loss, it's just a question of how much.You need a splicing device of some sort, usually a fusion splicer (which welds the fibres with an electrical arc). One of those will set you back £10k or so.

If you know how to use the kit and have the patience then it's not actually hard to get working cables, it's skilled work not rocket science. Though 'working' and 'high quality' fibres are completely different things. Kit costs a lot though at the end of the day.

pdw8 · 24 Sep 2011 at 01:06

I use patch fibres from 0.5m to about 30m on a daily basis. If i need anything longer or multicore we use a contractor. A 100m 24 core singlemode fibre costs about £900 fully installed, terminated and tested.