Ohio firm’s new device enables fiber optic cable in river beds | Crain's Cleveland Business

CEO Robert Bob Centa shows off PMI Industries' new device, which can splice together fiber optic cable so that it can be used in the most rugged underwater environments.

They say necessity is the mother of invention, but sometimes mother nature and geography play a role, too.

All three fueled recent innovations at Brooklyn Heights' PMI Industries, a company that specializes in installing underwater cable hardware, specifically connectors and terminals.

PMI, which has all its production and other facilities on Resource Drive, got an unusual request last year, CEO Robert Centa said.

The customer, a distributor, had a client that was running into some difficult situations laying cable in Alaska, Centa said.

“There are only three ways to move fiber,” Centa said. “One is the air, another is in the ground and the third is underwater.”

Going through the air with elevated lines wasn’t practical in the vast wilderness of Alaska, and the land the cable needed to cross is largely permafrost where it’s not possible to lay cable underground.

The customer decided instead to use rivers, of which Alaska has many, as pre-made routes for data cable. That was feasible, but to do it the cable had to be extremely tough to withstand the fall freeze, the spring breakup of the winter’s ice and any rocks and debris that might get washed downstream from the breakup or other events.

That wasn’t a problem for robust fiber-optic cable itself, but for the idea to work the splices between mile-long sections had to be just as tough.

PMI didn’t have such a connector and neither did anyone else — so it invented one.

What PMI came up with is a device, about four feet long and weighing about 30 pounds, that is secured to the ends of two cable segments that need to be connected.

The collared ends of the splice are tough and hold the cable so that it doesn’t bend too much and break the tiny glass fibers inside, Centa said.

Between them is a stainless-steel chamber that holds each strand of a fiber optic cable — up to 48 of them, each thinner than a human hair — in its own protective slot inside a 3D-printed tray. The seam where those fibers are welded together is also in that slot, where it can’t budge.

Then the entire steel chamber is filled with resin and made solid. Once finished, it’s a nearly indestructible connection and one that should last indefinitely, Centa said. It can’t even be removed once it’s in place.

It wasn’t that difficult, at least for PMI, which is used to working with cable installations in tough environments, such as at the bottom of deep oceans, he said.

“This is a brand-new product that we invented, using technology that we already had and other products, because we’re used to doing underwater cable management. So, this isn’t a reach for us,” Centa said. “It’s just a level of robustness that, quite frankly, we don’t think exists out there – and they needed that level of robustness” for this project.

Not that it didn’t take effort.

“With a tight timeline, it was an all-hands effort by our engineering, sales, and supply chain management teams," said PMI Vice President Jim Boone. “By leveraging our design engineers’ knowledge and in-house testing capabilities, we were able to validate the new design and exceed the customers’ requirements.”

The product is being used in Alaska and is being evaluated as it sees its first commercial use, Centa said.

PMI is privately held and keeps its information close. Centa declined to say what the company’s sales are or how many people it employs, though he did say an estimate on LinkedIn of 11 to 50 people is accurate.

So far, the results seem promising in terms of the new splicing device’s performance.

“They went above and beyond to ensure our needs were met and exceeded our expectations in every way,” said Tom James, a director of Power & Tel, the Memphis-based distributor that asked PMI to come up with the new product.

“I am truly impressed with the level of product quality and attention to detail. Every aspect of their product reflects a commitment to excellence, from the meticulous design elements to the flawless execution,” James said in a release on the new splicing system.

Now, PMI has not only a new customer to supply in Alaska but a new product it can market around the world, Centa said.

It’s a good time to have new products serving the data transmission industry' too, he noted. Just as they are expected to create new demands for electricity, data centers, cryptocurrency miners, artificial intelligence and other technologies rely on more and larger streams of data to work.

That means more cable must be installed, as well as maintained, and that’s all good for PMI’s business, Centa said.

“I think there’s significant potential for this, for all those reasons and then some,” Centa said. “More data, more cable, right? Hence the 10% to 12% compound annual growth rate expected in fiber over the next eight years or so.”