The fiber pulling machine upper clamp was binding up when we advance the trolly to the end of its stroke after the fiber is pulled. This advanced travel gives you the clearance to allow you to get the fiber assembly out after the fiber is pulled. This issue has been happening more and more recently and causes damage and gross mis-alignments of the translation stages and goniometer mounts. The mounting hardware fit to the fiber clamps was tightly constrained adding to the problem. There is a bit too much wiggle to the mounting stages that were allowing further issues.
Bottom line, I loosened up some of the fit tolerances and coaligned the top and bottom mounts followed up by a beam realignment. I will revisit this in the AM and pull a test fiber. Hopefully we will not have any further issues. I hope to install more robust stages in the near future.