Prysmian Group introduces Ultra-Compact cable with FlexRibbon™

PRYSMIAN

A new line of products, featuring MassLink™ with FlexRibbon™ Technology, can support large-scale data centres with maximized fibre density and duct space utilization. New 1728 and 3456 fibre count FlexRibbon™ products feature an ultra-compact outside plant cable design that contains bend insensitive fibres.

Jeff Barker

DIRECTOR TELECOM R&D PRYSMIAN TELECOM NORTH AMERICA

FlexRibbon™ brings significantly increased functionality to data centres. The new products condense the maximum fibre count into the smallest cable possible by using extremely flexible fibre ribbons that can be rolled up for high packing densities or laid flat for ribbon splicing. FlexRibbon™ technology allows a combination of very high fibre densities and mass fusion splicing. Much of the development work was done at Prysmian’s Lexington facility, which produces high volumes of traditional optical fibre ribbon cables. Much work went into examining how different optical fibre variants performed in the various new designs. Currently, there are several patents pending on various aspects of design, process, and materials technology.

 

“1728 optical fibre cables with record setting optical fibre density had already been produced by Prysmian with Flextube™ technology in 2014,” (see box) says Brian Risch, Materials Technology Manager for telecommunications, North America, who was responsible FlexRibbon™ materials characterization. “The issue with these cable designs was that the fibres were not in ribbon form, and therefore unsuitable for mass fusion splicing: the splicing of 12 fibres at a time rather than individual fibres. Time and labour savings really add up if this technology can be used, especially for very high fibre count cables. Traditional ribbons are planar in geometry. As cables are typically round, fibre density in traditional ribbon cables cannot reach levels nearly as high as those in non-ribbon cables. The cable diameter of the traditional ribbon cable designs was too large for the high fibre counts needed in the hyper scale data centres.”

 

“There were numerous challenges in design, process technology, and materials technology,” adds Ehsan Fallahmohammadi, Innovation team leader. “The initial challenge was to develop a new solution for rollable ribbons, where the ribbons can be flat for mass fusion splicing, yet are flexible enough to become round during cabling, allowing tight packing and high fibre density into the cable design. We had to innovate a new solution - FlexRibbon™ - to accomplish this, while avoiding IP of existing solutions.”

 

“After solving the ribbon application equipment challenge, the biggest materials technology challenge was developing an adhesive system that could be rapidly cured and had mechanical properties and robustness suitable for the application,” explains Brian Risch, Materials Technology Manager. “Traditional materials for encapsulated ribbons have deliberately reduced bonding strengths to the optical fibres so that these can be easily removed from the ribbon structure. With the much reduced bonding area for FlexRibbon™, a new and more robust adhesive system was required. This adhesive system was also required to not negatively impact fibre attenuation and also retain mechanical properties after aging and environmental exposure.”

 

Nick Anderson, Innovation Engineer, adds: “Another challenge that had to be addressed was FlexRibbon™ processing speeds, coming from a conceptual tested idea to one that could be industrialised to reach a speed that would improve profitability without being the bottleneck in the logistical flow of cable production. From a successful proof of concept, we improved FlexRibbon™ production output by a factor of three from the proven fundamentals through an internally designed manufacturing technology.”

 

Ben Wells, R&D Engineer leading FlexRibbon™ Cable development, adds: “Once the FlexRibbon™ concept had been identified, we needed to figure out what equipment could be used to actually make this concept. We evaluated several technologies used in other industries to find the solution. Once we had the FlexRibbon™ unit, the biggest challenges in developing the FlexRibbon Cables were figuring out how to manage so many fibres in such tight buffer tubes and how to adapt or redesign the existing equipment and processes to make such high fibre count cables.”

 

Maintaining the quality for the adhesion technology of FlexRibbon™ was another high priority. Prysmian North America and an Italian Engineering firm cooperated on a system in which the quality of FlexRibbon™ is monitored and controlled during production to maintain the stringent tolerances we have given to this product.

 

Jeff Barker Director Telecom R&D NA: “This was definitely a team effort across the Prysmian Group, with collaboration between Engineers in Lexington SC, Claremont NC, Dee Why Australia and Milan HQ, Italy to develop FlexRibbon™ Technology. Much of the development work on this project was done at our Lexington facility where we manufacture large volumes of optical fibre ribbon cables for all of the major service providers. We have had great support from all the functions (Operations, Logistics, Quality…) in Lexington so it truly has been a team effort, across multiple sites and functions. In terms of technology, we leveraged existing ribbon and fibre cabling technology with new materials and new processes. We also leveraged a great deal of optical fibre knowledge and knowledge of UV cured materials that we have in our R&D teams.”

 

“There is a great deal of excitement around using FlexRibbon™ technology in a variety of optical fibre cable applications,” concludes John Sach, Prysmian R&D Consultant. “Work is ongoing on introducing this technology into many cable design families for a whole host of applications. Any place where both high fibre density and mass fusion splicing are an advantage is a great place for FlexRibbon™.

© Copyright Prysmian Group.

All rights reserved.

© Copyright Prysmian Group.

All rights reserved.