Tag Archives: fiber cleaver

Fiber Cleaver – An Essential Tool for Fiber Splicing

In the world of fiber splicing, fiber cleaver is an important tool that cleaves the fibers to be spliced precisely. It is the warranty of a good splicing because the quality of the splice will depend on the quality of the cleave. And high quality fiber breaks with clean surfaces are the yardstick for good fiber cleavers. This article will provide some knowledge about fiber cleavers.

Basics of Fiber Cleaver

In optical fiber, a cleave means a controlled break that intentionally creates a perfect flat end face which is perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the fiber. Fiber optic cleaver is used in most production lines. It can give a precise cut at a cleave angle of 90 degrees to the fiber end. Cleavers are available for both single fiber or ribbon fibers.

Two kinds of fiber cleavers are often seen in the market. First is the pen-shaped scribe cleaver, which looks like a ballpoint pen. It has small wedge tip made of diamond or other hard materials. Scribe cleaver is a traditionally low-cost fiber cleaving tool using the scribe-and-pull method to cleave the fiber. The operator may scribe the fiber manually and then pull the fiber to break it. But it is difficult to achieve high cleaving accuracy by this tool.

scribe-cleaver

Therefore, in order to solve the problem of accuracy, the precision cleaver is introduced to the industry. This might cost you much higher than the scribe cleaver, but your working speed and efficiency can be greatly improved since multiple fibers can be cleaved at one time. With the extensive applications of fusion splicers, precision cleavers are favored by operators to avoid splice loss.

precision-cleaver

How to Use Precision Cleaver?

Precision cleaver is the mechanical device, which looks a little difficult for novices to deal with. Here are some simple steps that you can follow when using the precision cleaver:

  • Step one, open the fiber clamp.
  • Step two, press down on the button and slide the carriage back.
  • Step three, move the fiber slide back until it stops.
  • Step four, clean the stripped fiber with a solution of greater than 91% ISO alcohol.
  • Step five, place the stripped and cleaned fiber into the slot at the desired cleave length.
  • Step six, while maintaining firm pressure on the buffer, move the fiber slide forward until it stops.
  • Step seven, close the fiber clamp.
  • Step eight, slide the carriage forward.
  • Step nine, lift the fiber clamp.
  • Step ten, move the fiber slide back.
  • Step eleven, remove the fiber, which is now cleaved to the proper length.
  • Step twelve, remove and properly dispose of the scrap fiber.
Precautions for Fiber Cleaving

Make sure you comply with these precautions during the process of fiber cleaving:

  • First, wear a pair of safety glasses. This can protect your eyes from accidental injury. It is highly recommended when handling chemicals and cleaving fiber.
  • Second, be careful when using ISO alcohol. Keep the ISO alcohol away from heat, sparks and open flame. This is because the ISO alcohol is flammable under the flash point of 73° F. It can also cause irritation to eyes on contact. In case of eye contact, flush eyes with water for at least 15 minutes. Moreover, inhaling fumes may induce mild narcosis. In case of ingestion, consult a physician.
  • Third, store cleaved glass fibers in proper place. Since cleaved glass fibers are very sharp and can pierce the skin easily. Do not let cut pieces of fiber stick to your clothing or drop in the work area where they can cause injury later. Use tweezers to pick up cut or broken pieces of the glass fibers and place them on a loop of tape kept for that purpose alone.
Conclusion

Having a qualified fiber cleaver enhances the cleaving precision and efficiency. Nowadays, precision cleaver has been widely applied to accurate fusion splicing. Proper investment is valuable for the long-term applications. If you want to get one for your project, FS.COM is a good place to go.

How to Terminate Fiber Optic Cables?

Since the late 1970s, various connectors and termination methods have been brought to market. Now in the common case, cables are terminated in two ways: use connectors to make two fibers jointed or to connect the fiber to other network gears; use splices to make a permanent joint between two fibers. And for the former method, you may have little confusions to deal with it. So today this paper will teach you how to terminate by taking an example of fiber optic cable using epoxy.

First and foremost, use a proper fiber stripper to carefully slide the jacket off of the fiber to a bare fiber. When you are doing this, be careful that try to avoid breaking the fragile glass fiber. After that, mix the epoxy resin and hardener together and load it into a syringe (If you use the pre-loaded epoxy syringes that are premixed and kept frozen until use, then you don’t do that). And next you must inject the epoxy from the syringe directly into the connector ferrule.

Fiber Stripping Tool

Once you have well prepared the epoxy for your connector, you can insert the fiber cable gently into the terminus inside the connector wall and make the bare fiber core stick out about a half an inch from the front of the ferrule. In the case that your cable is jacketed, you may need a crimping tool, such as Sunkit Modular Crimping Tool, to secure the connector to the jacket and strength the cables. Usually two crimp tools would be perfect to this operation.

Next, you can just wait the epoxy to cure. During this process, in order to make sure the end of the fiber is not damaged while curing, you should place the connected end in a curing holder. And when this is done, just place the cable and curing holder into a curing oven. But you may worry about “wicking” while curing with a conventional oven. All you have to do to avoid that is to make the end face down, which can ensure the epoxy does not come out of the back side of the connector and compromise the strength member of the cable. Remember: your epoxy curing must in accurate times and temperatures.

After the epoxy cured sufficiently, fiber cleaver tools will be in use to cleave the excess protruding fiber core so that it could make the fiber close as much as possible to the ferrule tip in case of fiber twisting. Once cleaved, you have to dispose of the fiber clipping. There is a point you should think highly of that you must use a regular piece of tape to retain your fiber debris, or they will easily end up in your skin or even in your eyes or respiratory system.

High Precision Fiber Optic Cleaver

When you finished the fiber cleaved work, you could need fiber polishing tool to remove the excess epoxy from the ferrule tip and buff out any imperfections on the surface of the fiber. A smooth fiber surface can help to reduce the loss of the light. Last, if you have done all the above work, you may move on to the cleaning of the ferrule and fiber tip. After that, the whole termination procedure is done.

If you want to terminate your fiber optic cables by hands, you can follow the above steps. But before you get down to it, you must prepare the tools first that I have mentioned in this paper. All these tools can be found in Fiberstore with good quality and low price. In addition, Fiberstore also can provide the termination tool kits that may be helpful to you. For more details, you could visit www.fs.com.