by Greg | Sep 18, 2011 | Equipment
There seems to be a fair bit of confusion surrounding the topic of how to calibrate a arc fusion splicer. This question crops up from time to time, from both project supervision level personnel to the hands on techs in the field. When using the word ‘calibration’ with regards to arc fusion splicers there are really two meanings. The first meaning factory calibration and the second, arc calibration. Just for the record we are talking about factory calibration in this article. A field supervisor/engineer asks; Are your splicers factory calibrated? The answer is no . There is no way to “factory calibrate” a fusion splicer. The looks on their faces are priceless. The answer they are excepted would be, “Yes they are.” A technician asks; Should I send my machines in for re-calibratation? I heard all they do is clean them. I can do that myself. The answer is yes. Send that machine in every couple of year and have if looked over by the professionals. Confused yet? Well don’t be. Both answers are correct. Let me explain. Although the term ‘calibration’ is used when describing the accuracy and reliable of an arc fusion splicer, there is no way to calibrate a splicer. At least not in the sense when thinking of measuring instruments like an OTDR or power meters. Both of these are devices that can and should be calibrated at a minimum of once per year. Rather in the case of the fusion splicer, it is recommended to have periodic service and routine maintenance preformed to maintain optimum performance. Although you’re not sending it in for calibration per...
by Greg | Jul 25, 2011 | Equipment
Back in January I posted about a compact flash that was hitting the market as an upgrade to the CMA4000/4000i OTDR. Since then we have had one of our machines upgraded and wanted to give a short review of the flash drive. IMHO the CMA is the best OTDR every developed for testing fiber optic networks. The rugged exterior and the reliability of the equipment has yet to be match with todays OTDR in production. The draw back to all machines of that era was how the traces were transferred to a desktop computer. Choices were limited to a floppy drive or a par net setup. The shear number of trace data from a large network such as a FTTH project can take hours to transfer using a floppy. 1.44 meg isn’t that many files when your scan times are long and your acquiring multiple windows. If you own one you know what I’m talking about. Well, those days are over. The compact flash upgrade brings an old machine back into the game. File transfer headaches are a thing of the past. Here’s what you get when you upgrade ole Betsy; Compact Flash (replaces internal hard drive and floppy drive) USB Card reader/cord 2GB Scandisk There is only one thing you will need to train yourself NOT to do, and that is do not remove the flash disk while the OTDR is on. The card is not hot swappable! There is a big warning label on the inside of the floppy door lid reminding not to remove the card. Be very careful as old habits are sometimes hard to break....
by Greg | Jan 3, 2011 | Equipment
I just got of the phone with the nice folks at Legacy Fiberoptics. We were discussing an upgrade of a few of our OTDRs. Starting January 2011 they will be offering upgrades for the CMA4000 OTDR which will outfit your OTDR with a removable compact flash. Here are a few questions and answers concerning the upgrade. Q1. What is it? A. The CMA4000 Compact Flash solution is a replacement for the internal hard drive and floppy drive that originally came with the CMA4000. Traces are stored on a removable compact flash card, rather than the internal hard drive or 1.44MB floppy disks. The compact flash card can then be inserted into the supplied USB reader and plugged into the target PC. This allows for easy transfer to a PC and eliminates the need for 1.44MB floppy disks. Q2. Why did you do it? A. The 1.44MB capacity of the floppy disk makes the transfer of trace data from the CMA4000 to a PC a time consuming process. Other than the serial port (which is equally slow), that was the only way to get a hard drive full of traces off of the CMA4000 – one disk-full at a time. To put this into a little perspective, transferring 144MB of trace data off of a CMA4000 would involve copying data to a floppy disk over 100 times! As it’s a manual process, the time used just for copying data can add up significantly over the course of a year. Q3. How do you do it? A. When the CMA4000 is sent in, we remove both the internal hard drive (if...
