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Reports until 05:32, Friday 19 April 2013
H1 IOO
cheryl.vorvick@LIGO.ORG - posted 05:32, Friday 19 April 2013 (6134)
IMC flashing - alignment marginal, REFL made it to HAM1 but only by using all the drive in pitch on PRM, and beam was ugly
I aligned the IMC to a marginal state but good enough to see centering behind MC3, and through the FI, and to get a REFL beam to HAM1.  The alignment is bad enough that the 0-0 mode is scarce so power is low most of the time.

I spent a great deal of time on soft covers, both when they were all closed, and then again when I needed to have one open.  When I had one soft cover open, it was necessary to redo all the doors and have all 4 doors on HAM2/3 open, to ensure that the fabric wasn't rubbing the ISI (which was floating).  

This situation came about because Hugo thought I was worried about the ISI locked vs unlocked position, which I'm not.  I am worried about there ISI locked after the vent, then payload change on the tables vs refloated and rebalanced position.  Somehow Hugo thought I was saying I needed to work on the tables while they are floating, and I thought he said he couldn't lock them for my work because he would have to redo all of his transfer functions.  We have got to get this kind of thing straight so here is my part, in bold letters:

*** ISI in HAM2/3 - LOCKED (no payload changes) VS UNLOCKED (no payload changes) CHANGES THE POSITION OF THE TABLES VERY LITTLE ***

Given the troubles I had with the IMC alignment tonight
*** ISI LOCKED, THEN PAYLOAD CHANGE VS REFLOATED AND REBALLANCED, AFTER A PAYLOAD CHANGE, SEEMS TO BE A PROBLEM ***

From my observations in chamber, clearly something happened somewhere in HAM2 or HAM3, or both.  PSL pointing seems OK in HAM2, but beam is low at MC2, so that's a possible issue too.  PRM needed max. drive in pitch to get REFL through the baffle just before beam goes to HAM1, which could indicate a problem with PRM, or that the PRM is just responding to a change in the HAM2 ISI.

Status:
- beam on PSL wall seems OK - evaluating the picture will give me more info 
- MC2 changed in pitch by 500 urad in pitch to get IMC to flash, though IMC clearly needs more alignment
- PRM is maxed out in pitch to get REFL through the baffle to HAM1
- beam is low at MC2
- beam height at MC3 EQ stop baffle is good when driving MC2 with the 500 urad pitch bias
- beam is going through FI chain to PRM and back to REFL

I read an alog from a few days ago, which suggests the HAM2 ISI rotated and shifted and tilted from it's locked position.  I think the numbers in the alog are in counts.  I'll look into it tomorrow (later today).

HAM3 may have also seen some big change when floated and rebalanced.

PSL beam on the PSL wall was roughly in the same position - I have a picture, and will compare more closely tomorrow. 

Beam at MC2 is low by about 4mm, which means an angle change of 250 urad coming from HAM2, which could be a change in the input beam or tilt of HAM2.

After the IMC was flashing, although still not well aligned, the beam was going through the FI and REFL was returning from PRM and making it into HAM1.  Sheila and I did see that PRM did not return to a consistent position when driving it around it's max. pitch, which means it's hitting an EQ stop.  This needs to be looked at after I understand what happened to HAM2 and HAM3.

Conclusion:
I was hoping to sign off on the IMC and HAM2 alignment, but there are multiple issues with the current state of the IMC/PRM/REFL beam.  Some sort of beam does make it through the IMC and FI and back to HAM1, even if it's ugly and clipped (Keita's alog), so we could just close up and deal with the alignment issues under vacuum.  I find it easier to diagnose these issues at air, and would suggest we might want to have the ISIs in HAM2 and HAM3 locked and flash the IMC again, after I've had some time to look at trends.
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