Innovators

Splicing and termination equipment proves worthy of praise

Oct. 8, 2020

Two products associated with fusion splicing bring home awards in 2020.

Fusion splicing has grown in popularity as an efficient and cost-effective means of delivering extremely low-loss or virtually no-loss fiber connections. The two honorees in our Splicing and Termination Equipment category are great examples of the innovations that can take place at high-tech and low-tech levels to make fusion splicing an even-more-efficient process.

The PSI-15 protection sleeve insertion tool from Jonard Tools is designed to make loading protection sleeves onto fiber a quick and easy process. Inserting fiber into a protection sleeve is a precision process. The 250-µm fiber must fit into a sleeve opening that is between 1 and 2 mm. Aligning the fiber to the sleeve can be tedious. The PSI-15 can store 15 protection sleeves. Its conical fiber-feed surface guides fiber directly to the protection sleeve, and the tool facilitates fiber loading by providing a guide for the fiber to load directly into the protection sleeve. When one sleeve is loaded and removed from the tool, another sleeve falls into place.

The 90S is the latest core-alignment splicer from Fujikura, and offered by AFL. It is designed to provide high-quality splices. The 90S kit solves common problems seem in the field today, from splicing poor quality legacy fiber to automated equipment maintenance and upkeep The 90S can be used in any field splicing application seen today: bend-insensitive fibers in drop cables, long-haul terrestrial and submarine LEAF fibers, loose buffer fiber, splice-on connectors and more. The 90S’s speed and accuracy make it suitable for certain production and specialty environments, where high output, tight packaging, and low-loss requirements are needed.