An Injection-Molded Plastic Connector for Splicing Optical Cables

An injection-molded plastic splice connector for splicing optical cables has been fabricated and evaluated. Five optical cables containing 90-µm od graded-index fibers with 55-µm core diameters were spliced, yielding an average splice loss of 0.20 dB for the 425 splice joints measured. Fifty percent of the losses measured were less than 0.1 dB and 95 percent of the splice joints had losses less than 0.8 dB. Assembly methods for splicing optical cables using this connector and a multiribbon optical-fiber cutting tool capable of cutting 144 fibers simultaneously are also described.