breakout cable
Breakout cables are pre-terminated fiber optic cables. They consist of one or more optical fibers housed in a common cable jacket. The optical fibers of breakout cables are equipped with FO connectors at one end. They are used wherever a direct plug connection is required without junction boxes, patch panels or other components.
A breakout cable can be a patch cable and can be assembled with any FO connector. The non-terminated end is connected to the existing fiber optic cable with a splice. Breakout cable lengths are available by the meter. Breakout cables are available for indoor and outdoor use in simple and rugged versions. The rugged versions are ideal for industrial use with harsh environmental conditions. They can be double-sheathed, have a UV-resistant cable jacket, withstand high tensile and compressive loads, and be non-metallic, rodent- proof, halogen-free and flame-retardant.
As fiber optic cables, they can be loose tubes. They differ from other loose tubes in that the individual glass fibers are directly coated with an insulating material such as Teflon and have a common sheath. This makes the diameter much smaller compared to loose tubes; likewise the bending radius. As for the optical fibers of breakout cables, they may be fiber optic cables with multiple optical fibers: Around monomode fibers and multimode fibers. The monomode cables are available in all OS classes, the multimode fibers with the desired OM classes.
They are available as loose tubes with 2 fibers up to 48 fibers. An example of indoor breakout cable would be a fiber optic cable with multimode fibers, double cable jacket, terminated with an ST connector, SC connector, LC connector or MTRJ connector. Another example of an outdoor industrial cable could include 2 to 8 single mode or multimode fibers in certain OS or OM classes.