Reports until 13:29, Tuesday 18 November 2014
H1 ISC
daniel.hoak@LIGO.ORG - posted 13:29, Tuesday 18 November 2014 (15138)
OM3 misaligned

I don't want to jinx anything, but I have misaligned OM3 to steer the beam away from the OMC and the DCPDs, in case of big power spikes at the AS port.

I found that moving the OMC SUS itself was useless for moving the beam away from the cavity axis (vice-versa, really).  Moving the PIT and YAW sliders rail to rail only moved the beam on the OMC QPDs by a small amount.  (It was clear the sliders were doing something, but it was puny compared to the tip-tilt actuation.)  FYI the OMC SUS pitch slider rails the output to the DAC at +/-6000, for the T2 and T3 actuators.  The yaw slider doesn't rail the DAC output until +/-12000 (LF and RT actuators).  I was expecting the OMC SUS to have a little more oomf than this, we should check that everything is working correctly.

So, I've moved OM3 to get the beam away from the OMC.  Current slider settings are PIT = 1800, YAW = -1800.  The sign was determined by looking for the best extinction on the OMC QPDs and DCPDs with the DRMI flashing.  The magnitude of the slider value puts the DAC just at the saturation point.

The good slider values, which will restore the alignment into the OMC, are:

PIT = -437

YAW = 657

Note that this only protects the OMC diodes from bright flashes, not the AS WFS.  Those guys need the toast to work before they'll be safe.