ICT Today

October/November/December 2022 I 29 Regarding optical fiber, the tapered design of the connector boot facilitates the pre-connectorized cable slipping out of the PCPA at about 20 lbs of force, thereby protecting the pre-terminated optical fiber cable from too great of a pulling force. A helix adapter makes it possible to allow securing a soft sheathed cable into the same PCPA used for hard round sheaths. The friction of the pre-connectorized cable sheath in the helix adapter provides a gripping force in excess of 25 lbs without damaging the optical fiber(s) inside the 900 micron (μm) tight buffer tube under light duty pulling. See Figure 6. The PCPA is also designed to be easily untethered from the pre-terminated cable after the pulling operation is done and then further unscrewed from the pulling stick. The combined operation takes under five seconds. The PCPA can then be reused, recycled, or reintegrated in the PCPA circular plastic supply chain. The first PCPA was developed for ruggedized 4.8 mm (≈0.189 in) diameter BIF with self-bend limiting optical single fiber pre-connectorized cables. It is possible to staple these cables with a gun tacker. They can be handled by The goal for the use of the PCPA is to speed up installations with long connectorized cables. FIGURE 6: Soft sheathed 2 mm (≈0.08 in) pre-connectorized cable wrapped around a helix adapter and mounted into a PCPA for 4.8 mm (≈0.189 in) diameter hard sheathed cables. end-users without worry of the bend radius or connector failures. However, mechanical connector kits for 4.8 mm (≈0.189 in) diameter single optical fiber ruggedized cables are notoriously difficult to install. For this reason, pre-terminated cables are preferred. With the growing use of indoor PON and POL network terminals, which are expected to be self-installed or han- dled by lower-skilled labor, pre-connectorized cables may be more popular than field-terminated cables for those applications. Consequently, this a priority application of the PCPA.

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