POTD- PROJECT OF THE DAY: What Did You Make In Your Shop Today?

[dkemppai]

So, the local telecommunications company is plowing fiber. Being the scrounger I am, I begged a few feet of scrap to look at.
If you've ever wondered why it's so expensive to repair a fiber cable that gets cut, this may give you an appreciation:




This is a few of the 288 individual fibers in this cable. Not sure if the specs hold true, but a decade ago was told that each fiber is good for 150 gigabits of data. Multiply that by 288 fibers. If that holds true, this cable should be good for 4000+ Gigabytes (4 Terabytes) per second. That would empty or fill your 4Tb hard drive in one second!

This last one, is me shining my flashlight into the end of the bundle. Less than optimal, but it's getting just enough light to be visible on the purple jacketed fiber.



Due to the distances, I'm guessing this is single mode fiber. So the glass is something like 8 to 10um. So that spot of light is something like 3 tenth of a thou. You probably don't want to have to pay to splice that cable. Considering they might have to replace the damaged section that's 576 splices, or 1152 cut and polished fiber ends.

So be careful with your backhoes out there! lol

 

[tq60]

Backhoe fade is a real *****....


Many years ago our team was performing a splice repair on a major long distance fiber, it was a ring so everything just went the other way on the ring.

Some guy dug up the fiber somewhere else, made life real interesting, depending on the end points some circuits still up, most not so much.

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk

 

[rabler]

Not sure if the specs hold true, but a decade ago ...

Even with single-mode, I suspect it is distance dependent. Cisco makes 400Gb/s and 800Gb/s transceivers. Looks like they may use wave division multiplexing (multiple frequencies/colors). Other vendors may have faster especially in SONET applications.

Question to ask the installers, is it multi-drop per strand or strand-per-household? It's been 30+ years since I did optical fiber-to-the-home stuff, some misc projects with Scientific Atlanta ...

 

[rabler]

Got the first useful thing out of the recent 3D printer acquisition, from something I actually did in CAD (FreeCAD). Cover to hold the little air filter on the electronics (VFD) enclosure on the belt grinder. The duct tape was getting old.

 

[dkemppai]

Question to ask the installers, is it multi-drop per strand or strand-per-household? It's been 30+ years since I did optical fiber-to-the-home stuff, some misc projects with Scientific Atlanta ...

The guys pulling the fiber didn't know anything about the hardware. Understandably, their job was to get cable in the ground, so didn't care.
Splicing teams won't come through for a while. Hopefully, I'll get a chance pester them...

Some of the fibers will be used for a ring to an exchange in a town ~7 miles away. This run gives redundancy and picks up customers.

I'd imagine for these installs whatever is cheaper hardware will be used. We're residential, and spread out along the road so I'm not sure how they split it up. I do know that they have a box for a splice at nearly every house along the road, so it's a lot of breaking out of the bundle for splicing.

 

[ChazzC]

Reminds me that I need to buy the skeletons to throw in the dirt, before they pour the concrete...

View attachment 456950

Don't forget an old belt & monogramed buckle, maybe some old shoes.

 

[Makintrax73]

This was a fun project made from bar stock and 1/8" sheet from plans found in the downloads section. I made a couple minor changes including hex stock on the screw so I could wrench it if I wanted

 

[rwm]

Nice work Makintrax!

 

[woodchucker]

Nice work Makintrax!
View attachment 457010

I like yours. I always think it's crazy that there is no V block facing the way yours is on the Kant Twist. More often than not, I need it the way you have it.

 

[rwm]

That one is lockable with a screw also. That way it won't pivot and slip off. The hex key doubles as the drive bar.