Canford Launches Fibre Termination Service

Canford is celebrating reaching the impressive milestone of completing its 40th year in business, an achievement made possible through continuously evolving to design and manufacture distinctive products, producing industry leading technical literature and delivering a quality service.

The company is considered to be a major supplier to the Broadcast and AV markets within the UK, Europe and the Middle East, and is recognised for its high service levels and enduring quality of products designed and manufactured for these markets.

Canford acknowledges the move from standard definition to high definition broadcasting, and the widespread adoption of fibre as the preferred means of transport for video content from HD cameras. Also that the next stage development for programme making and broadcast will be UHD (4K), and that fibre will therefore continue to play an ever greater part in content acquisition.

Although still in its infancy at a consumer level, broadcasters are already upgrading to the necessary equipment required to handle this high definition content. With that, Canford believes that now is the correct time to begin its own in-house fibre termination service to better serve its customers. This decision is backed by detailed research, which has also shown that in many instances customers must currently rely upon small vendors to satisfy their fibre requirements, who might not have the capacity to handle specialist terminations or larger project based work. These customers have expressed a wish to deal with a well-established company with a proven track record of consistently delivering quality and reliability, with the capacity to manage project termination work and who they can trust to consistently meet their requirements. Canford's unrivalled experience of manufacturing for these markets and immense in-house technical knowledge resonates very well with these prerequisites and prepares the company perfectly to meet them.

Following strategic investment, Canford launched their new fibre termination facility at IBC 2016. The new facility is located at the company's Washington UK headquarters and offers a short lead-time service for the termination of LEMO SMPTE, Neutrik opticalCON and other fibre connectors, for situations where speed is of the essence and where high quality, reliable product is critical. Although capable, Canford's fibre termination service is not targeting the production of standard LC/SC fibre patch cables.

Stephen Gallagher, Canford Marketing Manager, commented: "Our aim is to become the de facto fibre termination service for customers requiring a qualified and reliable service with short lead-time. We intend to offer bespoke cable assemblies using various hybrid connectors as well as providing a repair service for customers pre-existing fibre cables. We will also offer UPC, APC terminations and within 12-months 12-way multi fibre (MPO/MTP) terminations, unlike other suppliers who currently restrict the connectors they terminate."

The fibre termination service is a natural progression of Canford's UK manufacturing capability, demonstrating the company's tenacity to evolve with new technology, and its continued commitment to support customers with innovative and relevant products.

Fibre termination project lead and Head of Design John Driver added: "The company has made a commitment to providing customers with an industry leading, high quality fibre termination service, backed by a significant investment in equipment and staff training. We launched our fibre termination service at IBC, which gave us a great opportunity to speak directly to customers, and understand how they intend to use the service. Feedback was incredibly positive, and we're looking forward to accepting orders."

The new clean room facility is equipped with state of the art fibre termination and test equipment to ensure that a first class service will be delivered "as standard".

The Canford Fibre Termination Team have been recruited from the company's experienced manufacturing staff, and have already successfully completed LEMO's SMPTE Fibre Termination Training Programme, meaning they are able to produce certified termination of LEMO 3K.93C Series SMPTE fibre connectors.

Industry leading testing and certification of fibre terminations will demonstrate quality and confirm correct geometry and fibre alignment within the connector ferrule (fibre offset). This attention to detail guarantees alignment and ensures terminations meet both IEC and Telcordia industry standards.

Test certificates are available if required, and will certify curvature radius, linear and angular offset, spherical fibre height along with a 3D illustration of the ferrule profile.

www.canford.co.uk

(JP/LM)