Michael, Hugh, Krishna

A lot of progress was made with the installation of BRS-2 today. In the morning, we cleared out a space on the VEA floor. We had to slightly reposition the SEI ground seismometer (STS2) and the PEM Guralp seismometer. We then cleaned the BRS-2 vacuum can, foam box and other parts and moved them in. Upon opening the vacuum can, we noticed that the epoxy (TorrSeal) on one of the capacitor plates had come off, likely during the drive. We found a suitable alternative (Loctite 1c) and reattached the capacitor plate.

We the proceeded with the assembly. The beam-balance was pulled out, the flexures were carefully attached and the beam-balance was then reinserted into the can and suspended from the flexures. We did a crude adjustment of the horizontal center of mass. The vacuum can was then partially closed up and the autocollimator attached to it. We then had to realign the optics to get the reflections from the reference mirror and the main mirror algined well. Tomorrow we will continue with autocollimator adjustments to get good reflection patterns on the CCD.

In the meantime, Jim B and Carlos installed the BRS-2 Beckhoff computer at End Y. Also, Filiberto and Peter laid out the GiGE, Ethercat and Fiber-Optic (For the autocollimator light source) cables going from the VEA to the computer room.

Plan for tomorrow:

1. Get the C# code to read the CCD data and start measuring the tilt signal. At this point, the instrument is still in air, so will have excess noise and drifts.

2. Hook up the electronics for the capacitive control and the DACs for writing out the signals. Once the cables to go from these to the SEI Frontends is complete, the tilt data will be accessible to SEI.

3. Close up the rest of the vacuum can.