 Fiber cable repair can fiber optic cable be joined. Fiber cable repair options. One of the advantages of fiber optic cabling is its ability to be joined several times in the same installation run. This is also helpful if you are in need of a fiber cable repair. Of course it is best if the joint or as the industry refers to them, splice points are predetermined. In many installations a fiber cable will be taken to a demarcation point and left coiled for future installation by others. The future installation then involves installing an additional fiber cable and splicing to the existing fiber creating a singular fiber connection cable. Can fiber optic cable be repaired? Demarcation and splice points are a regular part of any fiber optic cabling installation. However incidents sometimes occur and call for a broken fiber cable to be repaired and joined to reconnect communication. The investigation into whether the fiber cable is okay to be repaired depends on how it has come to be broken and how much slack spare cable is on the existing link. How do you fix a broken fiber cable? Fiber cable repair one. In the event that there is plenty of spare cable, the two parts of the broken fiber can have the damaged ends cut off and prepared. These ends are then spliced together and secured in a protection box, which houses the fiber optic cabling connectors. Fiber cable repair two. If in case the link cable have additional damage or not have any spare slack, then a different repair can be undertaken. In this situation, the ends are cut back to where the damage has occurred on each damage point. Then to reconnect the link, a new piece of fiber cable is inserted between the two points and splice twice. Once to each end, to again reconnect the communication link. How are fiber optic cables spliced together? There are a few different ways to terminate fiber cables, but by far the most common and professional is to use a fiber optic splicing machine. Both ends of the cable are prepared and stripped back to exposure the glass core within the outer sheathing. Then the ends are cleaned and cut or cleaved to create a perfectly sharp straight end. Furthermore these ends are then placed into a plastic termination protector and lightly pushed together. Once inside the protector, the tube is placed into a fiber splicing machine and the two glass ends are fused together to in essence, create a single piece of glass tube. Therefore creating a new continuous fiber core for communication. Locating breaks in fiber optic cabling. The outline above of repairing fiber cables is all well and good, when you know where the break and damage has been done. However when you lose connection on one of your links, the process of finding that damaged area can seem impossible. However with a tester called an OTDR, these faults can be found very accurately. OTDR, optical time domain reflectometer. What is the OTDR used for? The unit is used for not only fault finding, but also to test overall fiber link installation. The unit's main uses are 4. 1. Measuring the length of the installed fiber cable. 2. Calculating the overall loss along the fiber cable. 3. Highlighting the loss calculations of each event along the link, which is mainly joints splices. These also include the ultimate end termination points. 4. Fault finding. The unit works on the reflection of lights back along the length of the cable, once the light is launched into the cable from one end. As the light hits certain points of the cable, spikes are showed where the light is reflected. Small reflections shown for natural bends and parts of the cable. Larger spikes are seen at the start and end of the cable, as the light hits the termination points. Furthermore these spikes will be seen for splice points along the cable. Each of these spikes is in essence loss of signal along the cable. An in-depth study into OTDR testing can be found on the FOA website. OTDR and locating breaks in fiber optic cabling. The OTDR will measure the distance to a major event, and show it on the light trace. When a cable is broken it shows a certain event on the OTDR trace. The fiber optic cabling installer, can then move the cursor to the event of the broken cable, and the unit calculates how far it is from the start of the cable. In addition, the test can be done again from the other end and get another distance to the break. With these two distances, it can be accurately estimated where the break in the cable is, so it can be found. Fiber optic cable repair cost. How much does it cost to repair fiber optic cable? The cost will depends on many factors but as an outline, our professional fiber optic cabling installers with fusion splicing and OTDR testers, are £350 to £450 per day. The factors that will affect the price to a lower, or higher range are as follows. Type of cable and damaged. The majority of fiber cables are similar in price for a like for like cable. However fiber cables can range from four core cables, four core connections inside the outer sheath, up to 96 cores and beyond. When a cable gets broken, each core has to be repaired and spliced. Not only do higher core count cables have more termination repairs, they are also harder to handle and therefore more time consuming. Location of the damage. The access and environment of the damage will make a difference in cost. Splicing a cable inside an office will of course be more cost effective than if it's external, buried or required high access outside of a building. However all are possible and can be communicated upon an onsite of offsite survey. Length of the fiber. A longer link will results in greater time to access both ends, to firstly test to find fault and then to test to confirm repair. Fiber cables that are damaged between building naturally take longer to repair than repairing a cable inside the same building. Emergency fiber repair callouts. The majority of fiber optic repairs can be repaired between two to four hours once attending the location. This will depend on factors such as those is above. For a free quotation, please visit our website nmcabling.co.uk or call at 019-23888588.