Splicing Technique For Successfully Installing Aroona-Star Equipment; Splicing Principle; Fusion Splicing Process - Cailabs Aroona Star Instruction Manual

3. Splicing technique for successfully installing
AROONA-STAR equipment
A. Splicing principle
Fiber connection must follow set rules and methods in order to:
• Respect the maximum bending radius of fibers and cables
• Limit risk of fiber breakage and fiber bending after
installation by a thought-through positioning of fibers
• Ease the use of and upgrade of the fiber network by labelling
all fibers and connections
Once the AROONA-STAR, rack or compact module, is installed
in the fiber cabinet a splicing operation is needed between the
AROONA-STAR output multimode fiber and the network exis-
ting multimode fibers.
B. Fusion splicing process
The following steps detail the fusion splicing process:
1. Identify the fibers to be spliced (the existing multimode
fibers and the AROONA-STAR output fibers).
Multimode fibers at the output of AROONA-STAR are
deliberately about 4 m long (only for rack version) to
ensure they can easily be brought to the distribution panel
of the existing multimode fibers. Any excess length can be
cut before splicing operations or coiled and attached to the
cabinet at the end of the splicing procedure.
2.
Cut the existing fiber's connector and strip the fiber over a
few centimeters using the stripper. Depending on the cable
structure there may be several layers to strip (1 to 3 mm
plastic cladding, Kevlar string, 900 µm plastic cladding and
250 µm polymer coating).
NB: Use adapted scissors to cut the (yellow) Kevlar string
and relevant strippers for each layer to strip.
3. Slide AROONA-STAR output fiber into the splice protecting
sleeve. Choice of a 40 mm or a 60 mm protecting sleeves
provided depends on which splice tray size will be used to
store the spliced fibers.
4. Thoroughly clean the bare fiber using cleaning solvent for
fibers and lint-free wipes.
5. Cleave the fiber using the optical fiber cleaver to cut the
fiber at a precise 90° angle. It is critical to get a clean cut
to ensure both to-bespliced fibers show identical cut angles.
6.
Insert both cleaved fibers in the dedicated guides of the
optical fusion splicer.
NB: If the fiber has not been slid into protecting sleeves
remove the fiber from the optical fusion splicer, slide it into
the protecting sleeve and go through steps 4 to 6 again.
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NB: AROONA-STAR installation's most critical step is
the splicing procedure. Poor-quality splicing will have a
significant impact on AROONA-STAR's performance.
There are two splicing methods:
• Mechanical splicing: a component aligns the claddings
of two fibers and
Warning: Do not use mechanical splicing when using
AROONA-STAR. Performance will be greatly reduced.
Carry out fusion splicing instead.
• Fusion splicing: a fusion splicer aligns and connects two
fibers by melting them with the use of an electric arc. Fibers
need to be prepared in a specific way before the procedure
can start.
maintains them in contact.
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