Single-Mode Rapid Ribbon Splice

The increasing use of single-mode, ribbon-based cable with connectorized silicon chip arrays creates the need for a fast field restoration technique for the ribbons. The Rapid Ribbon Splice, developed for multimode applications, has been improved to provide a universal splice that fulfills this need for both single-mode and multimode fibers. The design provides by far the fastest, high performance technique for mass field splicing single-mode fibers. The splice produces a permanent service restoral in as little as twenty minutes ( 2 minutes /fiber), with mean splice loss 0.5 dB, and has long-term stability over a wide temperature range (-40 degrees F to 170 degrees F). This design is also ideal for rapid installation splicing in LAN applications because the splice is permanent, inexpensive and relatively easily accomplished. The same splice assembly tools as well as splice components can be used for single-mode and multimode fiber splicing.