Loose Tube Vs Tight Buffered Fiber Optic Cable

Tight buffer vs loose tube cable design.

Loose tube vs tight buffered fiber optic cable.

Loose tube and tight buffered. Loose tube cables are designed for harsh environment conditions in the outdoors. Tight buffer or tight tube cable designs are typically used for isp applications. Between them there are several common denominators like the fact that both have in their interior a strengthening member of sorts that can be made of stainless steel in the form of wire strands aramid yarn or gel filled sleeves.

Loose buffer or loose tube cables mean that the fibers are placed loosely within a plastic tube whose inner diameter considerably larger. Each fiber is coated with a buffer coating usually with an outside diameter of 900m. There are two styles of fiber optic cable construction. Tight buffered cables oftenn are used for intra building risers general building and plenum applications.

Loose tube fiber and tight buffered fiber. Fiber optic cable is available in many physical variations such as single and multiple conductor constructions aerial and direct burial styles plenum and riser cables etc. But each is designed for very different environments. The most proven fiber optic cable technology for long term reliability outdoors is the loose tube gel filled design.

Both contain a type of strengthening member such as aramid yarn stainless steel wire strands or gel filled sleeves. But there are two basic styles of fiber optic cable construction. Actually when talking about optical fiber cables you may be confused about their several standards of classifications such as connector construction standard and transmission media standard. Loose tube fiber optic cable is typically continue reading.

And this post will classify fiber cables by their cable design standard. Tight buffered and loose tube fiber are the two styles of constructions fiber optic cables offered. This type of cable protects the fiber from stresses caused by the environment namely moisture and temperature. Fiber optic cables are constructed in two ways.

Therefore protecting and preserving the optical properties of the fiber is a design priority. From the picture below we can see that loose tube fiber holds more than one optical fiber each individually. There are some similarities in their designed purpose but differences are obviously more than similarities between them. Tight buffer fiber contains a thick coating of a plastic type material which is applied directly to the outside of each individual fiber.

Each however is designed for very different environments.