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Antiques are here (Orionics Splicers)

Splicers got here today. No manuals, so I'm either limping along without or raising the ante considerably (66% more) to get those. If anyone has them and a bit of sympathy for a low-budget school project, please feel free to contact me.

The 303 appears to be fully manual, and has this odd arrangement of pointing the fibers down (30 degrees or so) to the splice zone, then bending them as they enter it.

The 304A is much more similar to "modern" units, in that the fiber path is straight through, and there appear to be electric as well as manual positioners. That also has a T&B 92208 cleaver bolted to it.

I haven't turned either one on yet. They are filthy in a way that you never want to see fiber equipment be, but which is far from unusual in

26/7 year old equipment that's knocked around a college, which is supposedly what it's been doing. Doesn't help that the 'Bay vendor didn't bother to zip the inside pouches closed before dropping them off at the UPS Store - who did a fine job packing them, but of course they would not have opened them up. So various things from the pouches were rattling around in the cases... I think I'll start with opening them up and removing the (likely very dead) internal batteries and whatever small junk (I see fiber scraps) has fallen down in the the lower case, as well as looking for signs of magic smoke escape before I apply power.

I might also see about fabricating some namby-pamby new-fangled stuff like an arc shield...I could even be cuter than most of the new machines and use a welding filter for that so you can see a little of what goes on (and still see afterwards) ;-)

They both appear to have spare electrodes, though one set looks like it's probably used "spare" and the other looks more like a new set. The

303 has a large packet of power transistors and some other chips, which implies that it might be a little needy in that department.

I'm a long way from splicing yet, but looking pretty good for the amount invested so far.

Reply to
Ecnerwal
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Interesting find. Some of the old fiber magazines are in google books with preview. Which means I finally went from "Nothing useful on the web at all" about the FW-304A to finding an advertisement for it on page 23 of the fiber optics magazine 1987 handbook and buyer's guide. It's got LID (analog LID, but still LID, circa 1987!) Whether LID will work at all with my RBR fiber remains to be seen, as well as whether it works, period.

Managed to find ads for the FW-303 and TD9950 as well - neither quite as informative in terms of new info as the FW-304A ad, but that's partly because those have a bit more info available elsewhere.

Reply to
Ecnerwal

What's LID?

Reply to
AES

Light (or Local) Injection and Detection - a way of measuring splice loss (now more commonly estimated by camera systems looking at the spliced fiber). The fiber beyond the splice region is bent, light is injected through the side of the fiber at one bend, and detected at the bend on the other side of the splice (rather than needing a light source and power meter hooked up to the ends, or or OTDR hooked up to one end of the fiber being spliced.)

More explanation and graphics at (scroll down a little):

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or here (watch the wrap):

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$all/EVO-773-EN/$file/EVO-773-EN.pdf I rather doubt it will work too well with Reduced Bend Radius fiber (at least as implemented on a machine that long predates the invention of RBR fiber) since it does not become so lossy at small bends as standard fiber, but it's interesting to see it at this early point in splicer development.

Reply to
Ecnerwal

Thanks! That's a really nice link.

What impressed me most, watching the guy working with one of those splicers on the tailgate of his pickup truck at the back of my lot a few days, installing the fiber pigtail that will eventually bring Google's Gb fiber into my house, wasn't actually the fusion splicer, which I knew existed, and which looked just like those shown on the web page.

It was the rough-and-ready character of the fiber strippers, with the guy yanking the coating off the fiber as if it were just another piece of #10 copper wire. I know glass is supposed to have a lot of strength -- I'm just not used to seeing it demonstrated in this way.

--AES

Reply to
AES

Google Gb makes me green with envy. We are stuck in the hinterlands of fiber access - 20-30Mb down/1 up is as good as I can get here without HUGE piles of money - 100Mb would be $7000/month on local loop costs plus $900/month at the fiber hotel, last I checked. 40 days of that and my annual budget would be gone...Way, way out of my league. I couldn't even get a number for gigabit.

We supposedly have a middle mile project coming in 2 years, but I don't even know if that will really get last mile and provider costs down to something reasonable here in practice (when they said they would connect it to "schools and libraries" it turns out they only meant public ones.) I have gigabit all over campus, but when it hits the edge (to/from the rest of the world) it goes to molasses.

Yes - it is a lot less delicate that you might think - in certain orientations, and with the right tools. Try that with actual wire strippers and you come to grief quickly. Most fiber strippers are the same basic technology as wire strippers, just a lot more precise.

Push too hard sideways on the stripped fiber and it snaps quite readily. What's actually surprising there is just how much difference even the smallest 250um (OD) plastic coating makes on the 125 um (OD) glass in terms of toughening up for handling. While you can easily break 250 um coated fiber, IME you have to be deliberately trying or utterly careless. It will even go a long way into a knot before suddenly snapping. But bump the stripped end on a cabinet and it will happily snap off (and send you looking for fiber scraps so you don't find them in parts of your anatomy later.) I learned to leave stripping until just before I put on connectors, after having started by pre-stripping a lot of fibers the day before I finally gritted my teeth and epoxied on my first batch of connectors.

Reply to
Ecnerwal

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