OMC has recently completed production of a major optical link requirement for a leading energy distribution company, the company mentioned in its official press release. As electrification accelerates, the company has seen demand for fibre optic technologies rise sharply in high-voltage environments and it has been scaling up production to match. That includes introducing cobots to handle repetitive, labour-intensive tasks, boosting throughput and capacity by up to 10×, while still holding tight control over quality and consistency.
Optical link requirements reflect a broader trend, fibre optic technologies are being used more and more in high-voltage (HV) applications. Optical isolation via fibre delivers real advantages for mission?critical HV use cases
“We’re pleased to be able to deliver large volumes of custom variants of our industrial fibre-optic datalinks and optoelectronic cable assemblies,” said William Heath, Managing Director at OMC. “In mission-critical HV applications across power generation, transmission, distribution, and supply infrastructure, users need reliable, interference-resistant, electrically isolated sensing, monitoring, data transmission, communications, and control. The dielectric construction and optical isolation of industrial fibre?optic technologies give inherent benefits: enhanced safety, resistance to high?voltage breakdown, high bandwidth with low signal loss, immunity to electromagnetic interference, and resilience against environmental factors.”
While HV applications in power networks clearly benefit from optical isolation, many suppliers struggle to deliver consistent performance in fibre-optic datalinks. “Most manufacturers of optical fibre cables don’t touch the transmitter/receiver (Tx/Rx) side of the link and very few Tx/Rx makers are specialists in fibre-optic cable assemblies,” explains Heath. “In practice, customers don’t want to get involved in either; they just want to convert an electrical signal at point A into an optical signal, transmit it, and then convert it back at point B – safely, reliably, and consistently, link-to-link, from day one all the way through the full design life of the system.”
OMC’s fibre-optic link service is tailored specifically to the demanding requirements of the high-voltage sector. “In HV applications, where tolerances can be extremely tight, any inconsistency between transmitter, receiver, and cable characteristics forces customers into a long and costly selection process, just to yield enough complete links for production,” says Heath. “But at OMC, we manufacture both the Tx/Rx devices and the fibre-optic cable assemblies that connect them. By adapting our existing processes and technologies to each application, we can supply production-ready quantities of fully characterised fibre?optic links with 100% link-to-link consistency.”
With over 40 years’ experience in making glass and polymer fibre-optic cable assemblies, OMC uses its own proprietary Active Alignment technology to ensure that every datalink performs consistently and reliably.
During production of housed optical transmitters (Tx) and receivers (Rx), OMC powers up each active element and fine?tunes its behaviour so that the electro-optical characteristics of every single device fall within a customer?defined performance window, exactly matching the required specification.
Equally important, when manufacturing the optical fibre cable assembly that sits between the Tx and Rx, OMC’s unique production methods keep link attenuation highly consistent. This attenuation is calibrated to match the Tx/Rx performance window, so that every link can be expected to operate safely and reliably for its full design life, no matter how the transmitters, receivers, and cables are paired during assembly or installation.
OMC offers a wide range of transmitters, receivers, and connector styles, and supports both plastic and glass fibre systems. The company is also highly experienced in 
manufacturing both polymer and glass fibre cable assemblies to match customer requirements.
Its end-to-end datalink service means design engineers can avoid the common trap of “mixing and matching” off-the-shelf components, which often leads to unstable or unreliable systems. Because OMC is technology-agnostic, it can also advise on the best fibre-optic technology for a given application.
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