Reports until 16:40, Thursday 16 February 2012
H2 AOS
keita.kawabe@LIGO.ORG - posted 16:40, Thursday 16 February 2012 - last comment - 18:01, Thursday 16 February 2012(2248)
TMS is hung

Today we installed the fall protection wire and temporary vertical protection bars for the TMS isc table, and removed the Genie, while the cube is still on EQ stops. It went fine.

Originally the temporary protection bars weren't required at this stage, however the new initial alignment procedure the TMS and the intial alignment people have been working on requires that a large target is mounted on the input aperture of the telescope plate. Since this totally changes the balance of the TMS/tele, we needed temporary EQ stops on the vertical protection bars.

Comments related to this report
daniel.hoak@LIGO.ORG - 16:56, Thursday 16 February 2012 (2249)
Link 

Photo 1:  It was difficult to attach our preferred cable into the bottom QPD bracket on the transmon table. (This is for the green QPDs, we think.) We removed the unconnected pins but this didn't help; in the end we switched the cables and things worked ok. (We preferred to use the cable with more slack for the lower connection, but c'est la guerre.) 

Now, the cable arrangement is (photos 2-5): 

Top QPD connector (red QPDs): S1104109
Bottom QPD connector (green QPDs): S1104468

Top ETM-side connector (picomotors): S1104116 
Bottom ETM-side connector (IR beam diverter): S1104114 

These numbers don't matter much in the long run, other than we will take care to plug the other end of the cables into the proper ISC connector on the bracket on the ISI table. (And then check that the ISC cables are connected to the dummy feed-through in the proper way...et cetera, et cetera.) 

Other attached photos: the transmon table is now hanging on its own. Note that since the telescope mirrors are silvered, if you look down the axis of the telescope you can see reflections all the way up to the periscope mirrors. Also, if you look down the green path from the in-air side, you can faintly see a QPD at the other end!
Images attached to this comment
keita.kawabe@LIGO.ORG - 16:53, Thursday 16 February 2012 (2250)
Link

We were hit by Tycor DB25 connector again.

In general,  female pins are not centered in the hole (it's pretty much dependent on the tension of the cables that are attached to the pins inside), and quite often we have minor interference between male and female pin. When this happens, if we force it the pins could be broken.

Today, one of the QPD male connectors didn't want to mate with female one, and one of the male connector pins was somewhat marred by the female pin. To ease things up, I unbent the male pins so it aligns better with the female pins, which didn't help, and then removed all unused pins, which didn't help. Finally I swapped the cables with male pins (basically swapped green and red QPD cables connecting the table and the ISI), and that did the trick.

See the picture of the disassembled connector with unused pin removed. You can see that the 6-th pin from the right top has a scar.

keita.kawabe@LIGO.ORG - 18:01, Thursday 16 February 2012 (2253)
Link

We still need to continue cable business, then back off all EQ stops to fully suspend it, then look at the BOSEM signals.

We might be able to have a look at the position of the telescope entrance aperture in the afternoon.