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What is the recommended fill ratio for pulling long lengths of fiber cables through duct or conduit? The simple answer: Less than 50% fill ratio by cross-sectional area is recommended. Multiple fiber optic cables can be pulled all together. The only requirement is to apply tensile load equally to all fiber cables. Especially for difficult fiber optic cable pulls, putting in extra fibers for later termination is the most cost-effective way for future bandwidth expansion.

Almost all fiber optic cable has a maximum pulling force of 50 lbs., and some types of fiber optic cable are rated for pulling force up to 200 lbs. or more. The maximum rating for four-pair UTP copper cable is only 25 lbs. That’s because excessive pulling force can easily take the twist out of the copper pairs and create cross talk.

In the earliest days of optical fiber jointing the sophisticated manufacturing techniques now associated with demountable connectors were not available. Instead existing components or technology had to be used or modified to provide an acceptable level of insertion loss. The most obvious method was to use a machined V-groove as an alignment tool and to secure the two fiber ends within metal tubes or ferrules in such a way as to ensure acceptable performance. It is relatively easy to produce V-grooves and tubes to the required tolerances: the difficult task was to align the fibers within the tubes themselves. These

Optical fiber cable installation is usually just as simple as installing coaxial or UTP cable in horizontal cabling. But the most critical factor in fiber optic cable installation is to keep the fiber cables’ minimum bend radius. If you bend the fiber cable tighter than its minimum bend radius, you risk big loss and even broken fibers. Hence fiber optic cable manufacturers always specify the minimum bend radius under tension and for long-term installation. The following table will give you a reference when deploying fiber optic cables. Application Fiber Count Minimum Bend Radius Loaded Unloaded cm inch cm inch Interbuilding

A breakout fiber optic cable offers a rugged cable design for shorter network designs. This may include LANs, data communications, video systems, and process control environments. A tight buffer design is used along with individual strength members for each fiber. This permits direct fiber optic cable termination without using breakout kits or splice panels. Due to the increased strength of Kevlar members, breakout fiber optic cables are heavier and larger than the telecom types with equal fiber counts. The term breakout defines the key purpose of fiber optic breakout cable. That is, one can “break out” several fibers at any