I just found out that you can’t splice fiber optics by gluing. Anyone else try this or do they have a way that works? Thank you.
Hi;
To be honest with you. I have Never tried to splice Fibre-Optic material.
Not sure, fiber optics are strands of glass, you might be able to heat the ends and smoosh them together. Not sure if they make a fiber optic splice, you may have to run a new strand.
Splicing fiber optic cables is a specialized technical skill in the communications industry. The ends of the cable must be polished to minimize light loss. The ends are then fuzed in a high temperature “welding” process.
It is a technical skill - not really a DIY hobby process
Yup. Splicing fiber optics takes a lot of training and practice to end up with a fiber that actually transmits light down its length. Its a frustrating process and requires a lot of expensive tooling.
If by cable you mean individual fibers, that is true. For an iindividual fiber it depends a lot on the material, and how much transmittance you want. A glued splice is possible on some single fiber types if you have light to spare.
My internet provider uses fiber-optic cables. A city work crew accidentally hit the line. It didn’t look that bad. There seemed to be at most a few individual fibres affected.
But rather than try and repair the damage, the ISP dug up the entire line all the way from the hub (several hundred feet) and replaced it with new line. This was their expense, not mine.
Since companies don’t like to throw money away, I’m guessing that repairing fiber optics is expensive and/or difficult enough that it’s just not worth it in lots of cases.
I use to repair fibre optic test equipment and in doing so, needed to slice a new nodulator or somesuch. It was very precise, time consuming work requiting a very clean enviroment and expensive equipment, and that’s just for one slice. Granted it was for extreamly precise measuring equipment but still wasn’t something you just glued together. I would just replace said cable if possable.
Mark, yeah, it’s much less espensive to just replace the line than spice hundreds of cables. Plus, thay know they won’t have an issue with a splice later in the game.
Echoing JohnnyK, why do you need to splice fiber; as maybe there is a work around.
Now, so you know, there arre easier and cheaper ways to do it than a fusion splice. I should know as I helped in placing (pulling, terminating, making functional) literally several miles of fiber all over Capitol Hill in D.C. between all of the buildings of the House and Senate, the Capitol building itself, Library of Congress, and seversal other sites that I can’t talk about (just trust me!).
So, again, why are you interested in splicing fiber.
Hi JMorgan.
If you are, why are you using glass fiber? It’s very dangerous if not handled properly. No one needs invisible slivers of glass in their work area.
you do realize there is plastic fiber optic strands besides glass don’t you? used a plastic fiber optic plant as a donor for it’s strands to light up a 4’ dia 4’ tall space station i built about 42yrs ago. still have parts of it upstairs.