This extremely rugged fiber optic cable enables mining personnel to access a corporate network and even its ERP system from thousands of feet below ground for critical tasks such as real-time maintenance tracking, ordering parts, review of electronic files or schematics, access to monitoring data, and more.
Once they enter the shaft or the portal, it can take several hours for personnel to travel to active mining areas. With up to several hundred workers below ground at any one time, immediate and localized network access translates into a significant time-savings on travel time alone, and contributes to more of a true real-time operating environment.
Rugged, tight-buffered fiber optic cable derives much of its reliability and performance advantages from its basic design. As opposed to loose-tube designs, which only have one coating surrounding each optical fiber, ruggedized tight-buffered fibers have two.
In loose tube cable designs, the fiber coating is only 62 microns thick, providing minimal mechanical and environment protection to the glass fiber. In addition to the primary fiber coating, each tight-buffered fiber has a secondary buffer that, together with the primary coating, reaches “heavyweight” proportions such as 387 microns.
In the breakout cable design, there is yet another layer of protection. Each tight-buffered fiber is surrounded by aramid yarns and a tight bound elastomeric jacket. Even at this sub-cable level, the sub units are very crush resistant, rugged and able to withstand environmental extremes.
In the case of OCC, the sub cables are helically stranded and surrounded by a special formulation, pressure extruded outer jacket. This Core-Locked outer jacket locks all the sub elements of the cable in place. The cable structure therefore acts as a unit, much like a rope. This enhances crush resistance, jacket tear resistance and overall survivability in harsh environments.
OCC’s fiber optic cables greatly exceed minimum industry standard requirements with a flex resistance of thousands of cycles, crush resistance of 2200 N/cm, and the ability to withstand 1,000 impacts along with temperature extremes of -55°C to +124°C. www.occfiber.com
