No matter you are a new or old field technician of fiber cabling, you may have an exciting moment on the finishing masterwork of your fiber splices in a fiber splice tray. In fact, fiber splice trays are commonly used in fiber-optic cabling as a protective case for protecting the splices from the outside plant environment and damage. Though the splice tray is simple and cheap, also without any technical functions, it still plays an important role in fiber protecting and also needs the experienced skill to using it. This paper is going to introduce the fiber splice tray that are intended to help both new and experienced field technicians or installers better understanding it.
Fiber splice tray is a kind of ODF (optical distribution frame). To better protect the splices, they are generally located in units referred to as “splicing centers”, “splice trays” or “splice organizers”. The splice tray is designed to provide a convenient location to store and to protect the cable and the splices. They also provide cable strain relief to the splices themselves.
There is no specific classification of fiber splice trays. In order to distinguish the different fiber splice trays at work, we usually classify the fiber splice tray according to its capacity of fibers. In addition, sometimes, we may classify them according to its size and shapes.
The incoming cable is brought into the splicing center where the sheath of the cable is stripped away. The fibers are then looped completely around the tray and into a splice holder. Different holders are available for different types of splices. The fibers are then spliced onto the outgoing cable if it is an intermediate point or on to pigtails if it is a termination point. These are also looped completely around the tray and then fed out of the tray.
Fiber splice trays can be located at intermediate points along a route where cables are required to be joined or at the termination and patch panel points at the end of the cable runs. Splices placed in a fiber splice tray which is then placed inside a splice closure for outside plant installations or a patch panel box for premises applications. When using indoors, they are often integrated into patch panels to provide for connections to the fibers.