Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Coiled Cable Assemblies: Fiber Optic and USB

Coiled USB CableUSB and Fiber Optic Coiled Cable Assemblies (customerservice@l-com.com)

One thing about cables: they are messy. They're often either too long, meaning you have to find a way to hide the slack or get it out of the way, or they're too short and you have to move things around to accommodate.

That's why coiled cables are so useful, especially in cases where they may be plugged in and out frequently or moved from location to location. For both USB cables and Fiber Optic cables, this can be a problem but for different reasons.

For instance, USB has a maximum length of 5 meters (about 16.4 feet). But, since you tend to move things plugged into a USB port (like cameras, mice, keyboards, etc), the flexibility to extend and contract the cable is very useful. L-com's coiled USB cables also have latching Type A connectors, so they won't fall out when the cable is pulled.
Coiled Fiber Optic Cable
Fiber optics, on the other hand, have almost no length restriction (you can run a single fiber cable several kilometers and still have connectivity). For that reason, most off-the-shelf fiber optic cables are pretty long. But when you're in a wiring closet and you need to patch fiber cords onto networking equipment, the ability to stretch a smaller cable and not have too much slack getting in the way is important.

L-com offers a selection of coiled cables available off-the-shelf, and we can custom build them.

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