The White Rabbit team at CERN organised a short course about fibre-optic cleaning and inspection*.

A special fibre inspection microscope that automatically analyses the image to decide if a cable or SFP passes or fails the norms was demonstrated.
The images of some of the often-used cables and SFP modules that we picked from the development lab, showed clearly traces of grease and dust.

*The course showed undoubtedly that fibres should always be inspected and that in almost all cases they should be cleaned before plugging in.
One should not forget to inspect and clean the SFP side either!*

The slides of this Fibre Cleaning and Inspection course are available via the OHWR Electronics Design project.

Thanks to Amin Shoaie from CERN’s EN-EL group for making this course available.
Note that this course and the practical exercises will be repeated at CERN in the last week of April. Please contact us if you are interested.

Click on image to see the course (pdf, 711kB)