A LED tells when the unit is ready to go. And by inserting the ferrule of the connector directly into a 3 mm hole in the heat block, heat transfer is immediate, reducing curing times. In the May 1997 issue of Electrical Contractor Magazine, there was an excellent article on quick terminating fiber optic connectors by John Highhouse. We used John Highhouse's numbers to compare his class's results with our experience training on the Fiber U Portable Connector Curing Oven. They used a cost estimate based on doing 1000 connectors, including the tools.
Lets analyze their numbers first and take out the tooling costs since the tools are reusable.
We figured on 6 connectors per hour, although we have done 6 in 40 minutes ourselves and suspect an experienced installer could easily do a dozen, and the materials costs are figured a bit conservatively. John used a cutoff of less than 0.7 dB, a standard value for acceptance. Here are his numbers compared to our results. An optional battery is available. The Fiber U Oven can be mated with the Fiber U Toolbox or any manufacturers standard toolkit for terminations.