Connector Services

Welcome to Technical Horsepower Consulting, LLC. (THC)

THC is an international high technology consulting company incorporated by Wayne Kachmar and built on his 40+ years of optical cable industry experience. Work includes consulting for wire companies adding fiber optics line in their manufacturing, cable companies developing and testing new cable designs and assembly houses determining cable specs or incoming cable quality tests programs.
Additional services include program guidance for certified test houses, optical cable spec requirements, independent outside expert review of cables or installations, optical patent attorney support, independent lab support of environmental chamber time, physical tests etc. and United States cable operation set up consulting (specifically for foreign companies) including but not limited to spec conversion, plant operation set-up, overall equipment and product line evaluation.

Technical Horsepower Consulting for

Connector Design, Test, Qualification & Assembly

Errors in processes can lead to failures and negatively impact long-term reliability

CONNECTOR DESIGN

While many types of optical fiber connectors exist, only a few have evolved into the standards that are used in the millions today. The others are typically used for environments that are difficult or have special requirements such as underwater mating or specific military or aerospace type applications. Others are hybrid types such as the SMPTE connector for HD TV camera or extreme environment cables for oil field exploration. THC has experience in design and qualification of all these types of connectors. While there are many services to support the front end of connectors (polish and profile of the mating surfaces) relatively little is available for the cable to connector interface.
As both the cable and connector designs evolve, this interface is under extreme pressure to accommodate new designs as well as legacy cables and tools. We have many patents in the optical connector area and with experience in both factory installed connectors as well as field installed designs.
As a result, it may not be suited for the particular application for which it is being used and may still perform in other applications for which it is used. Such as a cable that meets GR20 but is now using a different type of strength member that performs poorly with a specific splice case termination method. (i.e., crimps the aramid yarn around a post system and the manufacturer switches to fiberglass that is sensitive to compression and cracks at the crimp.) Both pass the tensile requirements of GR 20 but one is significantly less effective with a manufacturers splice case system.
Contact us to see how we can help you specify the right product for your needs.

CONNECTOR TEST AND QUALIFICATION

Many times, a connector is purchased based upon meeting a published standard (such as GR326) and is expected to pass specific tests called out in a detail specification (i.e., EIA/TIA 455 FOTP - Fiber Optic Test Procedure) as well as customer compatibility tests.
External independent test labs are expensive and use specific procedures to carry out these tests. Knowing how to prepare a sample and pretesting in your own QC facilities can save significant costs before submitting a sample to a customer or independent test lab as well as avoiding a failure that may be preventable.
THC can place our 38+ years of experience at your disposal to allow you to provide a qualified connector design and test result to your customers in a faster time and with less retesting. Additionally, many customers require both a verification and validation test plan prior to approving a connector design for their use. While these may sound similar, they are very different and meet different portions of the ISO 9001 requirements. THC can provide test plan creation and or sheppard your new connector designs through a test plan or independent lab. We have capabilities to test to standardized physical and optical tests for most connectors as well as the ability to create specialized tests for unique requirements.
Contact us to understand how we can help with getting your designs approved and qualified.

CONNECTOR ASSEMBLY

When the cable and the connector meet, several things occur,
First, the optical waveguide must be stripped and fixed in place within the connector,
Second, the cable strength members must be attached in such a manner that they provide complete strain relief to the optical waveguide,
Third, the end face of the connector must be polished to a uniform geometry and optical finish to meet interface standards.
Put this way, it all sounds simple. In reality the difficulty in mass producing the feat is enormous. Anyone can read a manual and assemble a connector and maybe get light through it, but those who do this for a living realize that the details and performance requirements are such that even a scratch of a micron width will fail a connector and a geometry error of a few microns will also fail a connector realize the amount of knowledge that goes into such a task.
THC has spent a lot of time developing processes and process improvements for this task. As demand for performance of assembled cable connector assemblies goes up so to does the cost go down!
Let THC help you understand the intricacies of making a better assembled cable for less.

Optical Cable, Technical Expert

With over 40 years of optical fiber cable experience THC can provide support in all phases of optical cable design, testing, specification creation and installation.

Having designed, qualified and installed optical cables for many varied applications as well as for massive volume applications, THC is uniquely qualified to provide any level of support to questions about optical cable design, specifications and fitness for a particular use. Also, with over 40 years of optical cable manufacturing experience THC is able to provide many insights into the optical cable manufacturing process from specialized equipment designs to material choices to best practices.

Being independent of any cable equipment manufacturer allows THC to provide unbiased recommendations and evaluations of all equipment manufacturers. The same is true in evaluations of cable materials and fiber type choices.