this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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tbh high bandwidth cables over copper are a bit of an anti pattern.
Would be a lot cheaper and compact if ethernet and video over fiber were more popular already
Having professionally terminated fiber, that shit is nasty and hazardous in a way copper will never be.
The little fiber bits can be razor sharp, you have to be careful of the naked fiber end, because it can get into your skin like a splinter, only it is clear, nearly invisible, can shatter if grabbed too hard, and is invisible to MRI and X-RAY scans...
I mean, if it weren't more dangerous, it would be really unbalanced. You want the player to have to make active choices with upsides and downsides.
The equipment required to fuse glass fiber to connectors is still slightly more expensive than a set of crimp tools. Really cool machine though
You don't need to fuse every fiber connection unless you're doing really long distance fiber.
For runs inside a building, single pulls with mechanical splices would work just fine. You shouldn't get much loss as long as there aren't more than two or so mechanical splices.
Source: worked as a technician for a fiber optic ISP.
Oh, I've never heard of mechanical splices, only the ones that heat and melt the fibers together. Can you do custom lengths? Is there a machine that does it?
I would genuinely love any info you have
It's basically just an end you attach to the fiber:
https://www.gomultilink.com/products/066-222-10?category=44
You'll use a cleaver to break the fiber at a 90 degree angle to reduce attenuation, and slide it into the connector. Once it bottoms out, you press something down and it grabs the fiber, holding it in place.
I know it's Youtube, but here's a video of the process:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuKm7t87SJU
The idea is you would pull a fiber cable through a building and terminate it with ends like these. Then install them into a bulkhead to make them similar to solid-core CAT5/5e/6 cable into a patch panel. You can then use premade jumpers to connect from the building wiring to the devices you're using.
The fusion machines are generally used for long distance links because of the significantly lower attenuation per splice. A fiber line that goes 40 miles is likely to have tens if not hundreds of splices in it depending on the number of spans of cable, and industry standard for fusion splices is 0.00-0.05 db attenuation per fusion splice.
That is super cool! Thanks for taking the time to reply!
Yeah, probably wont be possible for people to make their own data cables for much longer. Fiber cables are much cheaper and thinner than copper at least, so not as much of an issue to buy different sizes instead of making them yourself.
That's mostly because too few people use them.
The engineering requirements are also a lot higher. It's the difference between a nut, bolt and spanner, compared to a welding machine.