Benjamin Hamlitsch RCDD on Elevating Fiber Optic Projects Through Inspection and Cleaning

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Fiber optics can be a complex issue , especially to somebody who hasn't been trained , but if I could just give you one tip that you could follow , that would make your job easier terminating and testing fiber would you be interested ? I've got a special guest to talk about one thing you can do to ensure that your projects will have 90% less problems .

Welcome to the show , Ben Hollins . How are you doing ? I'm doing all right , Thanks . Thanks for having me on . I appreciate you coming on to talk about this important subject of cleaning fiber . You know a lot of people don't realize just how important it really is and since you work for true fiber , you might know a little bit about fiber .

I'm just saying right , why don't you go and give the audience a quick 30 second shot of who you are and why we should be listening to you ?

I worked for Fluke , as well , as a technical analyst , a technical support person , and then now I'm working here with true fiber and basically we're a manufacturer , product supplier , building out product lines and building up the different types of product needs in terms of fiber optics .

So all together , probably you know almost a little over 15 years in the industry , and back in 2010 , I acquired my RCDD as well and I've maintained that . So , yeah , so a little bit of industry experience there as well , very good .

I think in the past a lot of times , what we would kind of recommend is always clean and then check it and then plug it in or clean it again . That's kind of was kind of the idea .

But the idea now is slightly different and you may have heard of this and some of me have heard of this , like some of the Bixie conferences as well , some of the presenters and it really makes a lot of sense is is really inspect first , then clean , then inspect again , and the reason for that is because a lot of times , coming from manufacturer , you know they

do a pretty good job of cleaning those end faces now . So you might inspect it and it's perfectly clean , there's no issues . If you were to introduce a whole cleaning method to it again , you might actually create more issues . So so that's kind of the idea and but yes , it is very important .

So if you inspect it and you and you see something on there in terms of whether it's dust , dirt . If you see some film or something , definitely go ahead and clean it , and and there's a few different ways of doing that which I think we'll probably get into here soon . But but yeah , definitely very important .

And and here's like a quick little statistic that I just heard recently it says the cause of network failures is is contaminate , contaminated connectors . That's , that's the major cause and it's and one of the statistic was was 80 percent of Network issues is connector issues .

So whether that's 100% accurate or not , but that's a huge percentage and it's probably true because when we talk fiber optics , that that is Nine times out of ten the issue .

I got that from a training that I just recently sat in on with the , with the manufacturing company , a test testing manufacturing company that makes test equipment , and that was the statistic that they just popped out there and their I think there's a lot of truth to that , because and I've said this many times on the show I've sat in several big see classes and

every single time I sit in a big see class they always say you know , 90% of all fiber optic problems are because of dirty connectors . And that's even more true . So today , you know , back 20 years ago , when we were doing hot melts , when we were doing two part epoxy connectors , there were other things that could happen .

Like you could , you could actually break the fiber down in because you push too Hard with your , with your re-rescribe or something like that . But in today's environment , most of the connectors are gonna be some type of fusion splice on connector or that's a pre-polished at the factory , some type of a mechanical connector that's pre-polished at the factory .

So , realistically , as long as you do the , the fusion splicing right or the mechanical splicing right , you got a factory polished edge there . So You're not gonna have that , that that bad cleave , right .

Yeah , let me ask you this a lot of technicians they probably understand the role to inspect before you connect , when they're talking about , you know , going out and plugging into an existing , you know fiber optic enclosure or an adapter panel or something like that . What is your recommendation ?

Let's say , let's say I'm doing a project and I just I'd open up my box with my , my x , what my , my true fiber Parts right , and I pull out the that adapter panel , right , or those or those enclosure . Should I inspect those before I click anything to them ?

Yeah , so if , if you've got I mean anything with a connector , so anything with an end face , a fiber optic end face , so that would include like a , you know , like a Transceiver SFP or something like that too , inspect it first and then , if it needs to be cleaned , definitely I'd recommend cleaning it .

And so I think you can't , when it comes to that , this process of the installation part , fiber optics you can't really , in my mind , do too much in terms of inspecting and then cleaning it's . It's just , it's very important and it's gonna save you a lot of headaches Down the road potentially .

You protective caps , or Technicians like to call them dust caps , but they're not really dust caps , they're really protective caps and they they lose them .

So now you got that end face on , a piece of equipment is being exposed to the atmosphere , which could be moisture , it could be dust , dirt , and if you're taking a brand new patch or you're plugging in , it doesn't work .

You might be thinking , well , this is a new patch , or was it not working , I mean , and you might have inspected your patch , but you might not have inspected the equipment . So it's a good idea . I think I always tell techs all the time inspect every patch , cord . It's brand new , out of the bag or not , right .

You know every , every connector , it , because it's you can't , you can't inspect it too many times to ensure that it's clean , right and it all the Texas . All it takes is one time to plug it dirty . Oh , here's one I just thought of . I don't want Just send me test equipment .

Make sure the test equipment is not dirty , because if you plug it , if you plug a brand spanking new patch cord into a piece of a test cord , that's , that's Contaminated . You just cross contaminated your test cords .

So both sides of that is extremely important right .

Look at it one more time before you plug it back in , because you may not have Cleaned it thoroughly enough . Yeah , some stuff on there , so yeah , I see , I see . Is the good like an acronym .

So those are , those are the methods for dry cleaning . Wet cleaning Is is another option and that's if , if the dry cleaning is is not working or there's maybe some embedded dirt or something on there that needs to be removed with a little bit more , you know , a little bit more force , the dry or the wet cleaning can be used and and .

But what's really important , and and I think it's it's important to mention this is , you know , years ago isopropyl alcohol was the go-to right . Let's use ice , ice , probe alcohol . That's the best . Let's , you know , fiber clean . It's not really recommended anymore . It's .

It's recommended to use an actual fiber optic cleaning solution On the wet side , and the reason for that is , you know , it's designed specifically for cleaning fiber optics .

So they've , they've , they've Maximize the , the you know the way it needs to be designed I guess it's like a better word Whereas the ice is probably alcohol , a lot of times will leave a film , or Sometimes it'll leave a residue or something like that , and that's not .

It's not always picked up or seen with the fiber scope and especially if you're using a handheld , sometimes it's , it's you can't see it , so so that's really important . So on the wet cleaning but the process for the wet cleaning is is a little bit more . I guess involved too is you want to make sure , is you want to go from wet to dry .

So if you're using the wet Cleaning process , you want to use the , the alcohol . You want to clean the end face on the wet and then go to dry In terms of the cleaning .

So so those are the two kind of main ways of doing it , and then there's a and then there's , and then there's kind of a combination of the two which I kind of Just touched on , and that's the wet to dry process . Those should , by all intents and purposes , take care of your issues sometimes . Sometimes it doesn't but that those , those should .

By the way , when you're looking at fiber in face , you really should be using a minimum of a 200 power scope to kind of check that in face out . There are 100 power scopes and a lot text run with 100 power scopes , but you miss a lot of the dirt and debris .

Let me ask you this , because you talked about the wet , dry and the wet the wet system in the dry system . Is One better than the other , or is there or is there a specific Application where you might want to choose one over the other ?

But if you're inspecting it and you're just not getting it with the dry , then switch to the wet . It's a little bit more involved , takes a little bit more time to do so in time is money , as we know in this industry .

So I think it's always great or good to start with what's easiest , but you may need to switch to the other , which would be the wet , to start cleaning . So that's kind of my take on it . If I was to be out in the field again doing it , whereas I would inspect it If I see something , I would give it a clean with the dry click cleaner .

If that doesn't do it , then I'd switch to a wet , sorry , and use that .

So , yeah , make sure that it's a specific fiber optic lint-free wipe , and absolutely those could be used .

When you use the cassette cleaners you know that you're always on a nice new , clean spot of dry cleaning pad . If you're using that lint-free wipe , you might be going back over a piece of the lint-free wipe where you just wipe something else and you might be cross-contamining your connector again .

So you could be out with the lint wipe , you're covering the whole surface of the end face and that could be pulling dirt from the outside corner of the end face to the core or something like that , whereas with the clip cleaners or that style , they've done a lot to really focus it on the cladding and core area in order to just make sure that that's

specifically clean , so why might it be important to inspect it first ? So that's a really good question .

We've kind of touched on that a little bit , but I think it's worth reiterating for sure . You just don't know if it's going to be contaminated or if it's going to be clean already , and so the inspection first is just such an important step .

If it's not dirty , there's no reason to clean it again , and that's been proven true in a lot of different scenarios and situations where it was totally clean under inspection , but they cleaned it anyway and then someone added dust or dirt or some sort of cross contamination , maybe even from the inspection tool itself , because it wasn't clean .

And that's another thing to maybe mention . Is the inspection tool being used , whether it's a video scope with a with a end piece that slides into the fiber connector to view the end face , or if it's an actual handheld scope with the , you know , with the fiber entering the front of the scope , those .

It's extremely important to make sure that those are clean as well . Your inspection process , which is to inspect the fiber optic end face to to ensure that it's clean , could easily be contaminating the connector that you're plugging in in there . So so another , another great thing to verify and check .

I think if we walk away with you know anything in this entire podcast ? It's inspect and clean , but cleaning is so important when it comes to fiber optics . It's , it's , it's a end game solution .

That way there's no future potential warranty issues or service calls because they said , oh , your connector was dirty . No , it was clean . Here's the picture . See , I remember I sent it to you in the email . So , yeah , my preference always to have some type of a fiber scope that's got the ability to take pictures , right , yeah , so the micro .

You know quite a bit more and if you know if you , if you're looking to invest in something , really that's the way to go . The other nice thing about it is , like you just said , for documentation purposes , most of these video scopes , you know if they're any kind of quality video scope , they're going to actually test to the , the IC standard .

They're going to give you , you know , breakout and really kind of isolate the core and the cladding in terms of how that test procedure process goes . It's going to give you a grading , a pass , fail , that type of a thing . So that's really , that's really , in my opinion , the better way to go when it comes to inspection .

What did the standards say when it comes to cleaning fire ? Because I know the code says nothing about it .

They got the big old one , yeah , right and so , but but it used to be real , real stringent and the core and the cladding and all that were kind of combined into a single type of test and it was the slightest micron of dirt and dust whether which . We don't want that , but but it was almost impossible sometimes to pass that test . Well , they've changed it .

They're addition three . They've made some slight changes to that . They've allowed , they've isolated the core to its own , to its own cleaning . They've isolated the cladding to its own cleaning . So they've done that in terms of what is allowed and what's past fail . They've actually something interesting that they added that wasn't there before .

That I thought was interesting is that after numerous cleans and they don't give a number , but say two or three cleanings and you've seen something that's still there but it's not affecting the performance . So you , maybe you run a loss length test or an OTDR and the performance is there .

They say , go ahead and pass that cable or pass that end face as a pass , even though you might see something . It could be something that maybe in the cladding that's slightly embedded or something like that , but it's not affecting the core .

Those are some of the key takeaways that I kind of noticed in the new IEC end face standard website that's forward facing to the customer , which covers those IEC things that we were just talking about .

One of them needs to be a little bit updated with this new IEC standard some of the changes that were made but generally speaking they have all the information we're discussing here pretty much .

One of the things we talked about , isopropyl alcohol earlier , and one of the things too that they found , is that if there's a film or a residue of isopropyl alcohol left on the end face and that gets plugged into a transceiver on some of these higher bandwidth transceivers , getting into 400 , 400 , 800 gig , they're pushing a lot of power through those transceivers

over the fiber optic cable and that residue can create heat . So as that's exiting , the transceiver can create heat and that can actually could destroy or cause damage to the transceiver . So that's on the isopropyl side .

On the cleaning side , obviously , if you're working with single mode and you haven't properly cleaned it or there's dirt or something on it we're talking the smallest speck of dust can completely kill your signal . We have an 8 micron core . If we think about the size of that , your hair is about what ? 16 micron ?

So , again , extremely important from an application standpoint , from a use case standpoint , to ensure that your network is performing optimally .

Lots of technical information and articles on there that I think are , you know , could be beneficial to installers and end users and anybody out there that's looking to get into working with fiber optics . Excellent .