Fusion Splicing

Fusion splicing is the process of joining (splicing) bare fibres together to form a continuous link.  This occurs by use of a finely tuned electric arc, hence the term fusion splicing.

Fusion splicing at work
Mid cable joins are the most common form of join and are used to create long runs of cable. The cable is laid out through the pit system and joined to the next segment until it reaches its destination. In this way carriers can build links ranging from 5km to 100km.

Cable repair is another application of the mid cable join. This usually occurs when someone forgets to “Dial Before They Dig”.

Splicing at the patch panel is sometimes a viable alternative to “direct” terminating, most commonly when terminating singlemode cables at the patch panel. While it’s possible to hand terminate singlemode fibres, it is not the commonly approved practice. With the smaller size of the core in singlemode fibre, any small polishing imperfections may substantially obscure the core, causing losses or system failures.

When in doubt, Singlemode = Splicing!

Optical Terminations can assist you in providing the necessary fusion splicing expertise without the up front cost of training and tooling.  While fusion splicing may seem easy, the results can be otherwise!  Just look at the standard of these two jobs.  They are in the same room of a major corporation, but Optical Terminations was only responsible for one of them!

Interestingly, the messy job done below was done by a technician with a fibre qualification.  However since he only does minimal amounts of fibre, he was out of his depth.

Would you want your network running on this?                Or this?