D. Hosken, G. Grabeel, T. Vo

Today we wanted get the CO2X laser table in a position to run the closed system overnight.  We've taken some extensive precautions using redundant beam dumps along the laser path to make sure that we don't have stray beams and that the main laser beam does not get into the vacuum system via the periscope.

Beam dump locations:
- After the output beamsplitter
- Secondary beam dump after the final steering mirror
- A shield between the second iris and the first periscope mirror

The rotation stage was power-cycled to see if we could reproduce the errors that M. Heintze saw last week but we couldn't get the same behavior.  I also forced the Motor Warning label to be "FALSE".  We've left the rotation stage close to minimum power with about 2.2 Watts going through after the polarizers so we can monitor the beam power down stream with an on-table power meter that should be reading ~.199 Volts (working but not yet calibrated).  We expect it to go up and down a bit because of the temperature fluctuations and we left PZT/Chiller loop open.  The jumper for the interlock for the rotation stage is removed so that no one in the control room can rotate the HWP via EPICS.


We've left the HEPA and the lights off at 6:00 PM PT,  The table is locked and we've tagged out the keys and left them in the control room box with our phone numbers attached.

ISS PD adjustments:
We removed the covers and beam dump to let light onto the ISS PDs.  We also translated the PDs back ~2-3 mm back and fine-tuned the alignment onto the center of the PDS.

Temperature Sensors: 
The temperature sensors were not working very well at first.  There were only 2/6 working which turned into 1/6 as we were trying to troubleshoot.  Turns out that the problem was due to a loose connection at the feedthrough, once we tightened the connector screws, everything worked pretty well.  We'll be monitoring these temperatures quite closely during the overnight observation because it'll give us a first-look indication if anything is wrong.

H1-TCS-C_CO2_X_TEMPERATURESENSOR1 = AOM
H1-TCS-C_CO2_X_TEMPERATURESENSOR2 = PLUMBING MANIFOLD
H1-TCS-C_CO2_X_TEMPERATURESENSOR3 = AOM DRIVER
H1-TCS-C_CO2_X_TEMPERATURESENSOR4 = WATERCOOLED BEAM DUMP
H1-TCS-C_CO2_X_TEMPERATURESENSOR5 = RF DRIVER

This morning the end Y laser was off and had no power, Richard looked around and noticed that there was an extension chord which had come loose.  He changed the way that this is plugged in so this should not happen again.

Alexa and I placed the GigE camera on ISCT1 for the X arm.  

I also went out to End Y a few times to work on the IR path there.  The LSC PD is now aligned for the IR trans, the gain setting is 60dB.  The power cable is flaky for the analog camera.  Aaron and Fil helped get the signal to the control room. Although the spot is faint you can see it in the upper right hand corner of channel A on the lower monitor. 

8:54 am, Jeff and Andres to the CS VEA, work around HAM4/5 area.
9:05 am, Jason to the CS VEA, East bay area for alignment work. <-- Done by 12:33 pm.
9:20 am, Jeff requested aide from Apollo, work on and around HAM6, 30 min. curtain work while using a small scissors lift.
9:20 am, Travis to the CS VEA, West bay area for ACB assembly work.
9:30 am, Betsy  to the CS VEA, East bay area work.
9:42 am, Richard to End Y VEA, ESD work.
10:18 am, David H. to CS VEA, near HAM4, Hartmann sensor table work.
11:00 am, Restarted video4, loaded camera views only, no striptool, elimination process for "freezing" issue.
12:00 pm, ACB crew out of CS VEA.
12:45 pm, Cris to X-End station VEA, cleaning.
12:45 pm, Karen to Y-End station VEA, cleaning.
1:11 pm, Travis to CS VEA, West bay area for ACB work.
1:13 pm, Mitchell to CS VEA, West bay area for ACB work. <-- Done 2:20 pm.
1:16 pm, Betsy to CS VEA, West bay area for ACB work.
1:45 pm, Justin transitioned the LVEA to laser hazard.
2:30 pm, Thomas and David to CS VEA, East bay area for TCS work, powering laser inside table.
2:45 pm, Mark L. to CS VEA, TCS install work.
3:45 pm, Jeff and Andres to CS VEA cleaning area. <-- done 4:05 pm

 

I noticed that the PD offset nulling script for PRMI did not run for some reason. I looked into the script and found that this was due to too-many PD channels requested to tdsavg at once. So I modified the script so that it divides the PDs into a number of group. This seems running OK at a expense of the processing time. The modified script is named as lsc/h1/scripts/pdOffsetNull_ver2.py. I also checked this script into the svn.

• X axis (lateral): +0.03 mm (north)
  • Tolerance: ±3.0 mm
• Y axis (longitudinal): +0.3 mm (west)
  • Tolerance: ±3.0 mm
• Z axis (vertical): +0.9 mm (high)
  • Tolerance: ±3.0 mm

I have begun setup for the pitch/yaw alignment; will finish fine set tomorrow morning and we will commence with SR3 pitch/yaw alignment.

BS ISI tripped at 12:25pm. Certainly due to a second earthquake (5.8 southern east pacific rise)

FYI - The EY wind channel died ~2 hours ago.  Richard reports that "someone was working out there and it's probably related."

While poking around looking at screens in the control room this morning, I noticed the ETMx OL sum is was low.  Some trends reveal that there was a drastic drop of the laser power on the QPD on Sat morning.  A trend of ETMx signals, as well as some ISI and HEPI signals (not shown), indicate those systems are ~healthy.  So, it does not seem that the physical pointing of the ETMx via SUS or SEI has changed the pointing on the OL.  Note, this happened a day after the Fri EQ which caused all the ISIs to trip.  Likely we should investigate the OL itself to see what's going on with the laser beam/QPD.

Arnaud reports that at ~midnight last Friday night, all of the ISI tripped due to an earthquake.  There was a magnitude 6 EQ in Mexico May 10 07:36 UTC which correlates to the ISI's tripping at 07:50 UTC.

Gerardo says there is an earth quake on the oregon coast, so far end X is the only one tripped.

Here is the last 30 days of YEND temperatures. Shown is the LVEA average and two of the four zones from which the average is derived.

The large positive spike is experimentation with chilled water flow - (Robert and John on 4/20).

The smaller negative going spikes are not explained but may be related to human actions as I have stopped and started chillers several times in this period for diagnostic purposes.

It's not clear what caused the trips from this morning. The ones from Friday night seem to be related to earthquakes.

It's not a problem for now, even if we use oplev damping, because the oscillation leaking to the oplev error signal (attached, a tiny bump at 0.32Hz for green curve) is small enough.

Anyway, it seems like this has been going on for the past  four weeks (second attachment), and even if it doesn't get worse, oplev people should look at it after the integration test.

Oplev SUM peak-peak was a factor of 10 worse before it settled down to the current state (beginning of the second attachment), but I cannot see the raw data so we cannot say what was going on then.

no restarts reported.

• HAM5:  SR3--small adjustments to make this morning
• TCSy Table work (need hazard probably by 2pm)
• TCSx 2-day run with laser
• Hartman Table work
• Richard:  Beckhoff modules, fiber work, EY ESD cont.,
• Travis ACB:  box & bagged,  blade pull down
• Staging Pull Down:  Unit2:  electronics issue for testing, Unit 3 pulled springs Fri & actuator/trillium measurement,
• Apollo:  scotty staging, machining TCS camera mount
• Commissioning:  discussions of installation work/noise impact (issues regarding yaw change with ITMx)
• Jamie here for HEPI integration into Guardian

model restarts logged for Sat 10/May/2014
2014_05_10 05:02 h1fw1
2014_05_10 18:42 h1fw0

both unexpected restarts, not simultaneous so no data lost.

(David H, Thomas V, Greg G, Alasitair H, Matt H)

Well if yesterday was "The Empire strikes back", today was "Return of the Jedi" and the good guys had a win.

You may remember from this mornings alog that we had been having a few troubles with the alignment of TCSx.

After a brainstorming meeting with Aidan the decision was made to ignore the path defined by the flipper mirrors having problems with (what is supposed to be the central heating path) and align what is the annular heating path (which only uses mirrors) to the output beam splitter and through the irises defining the beam path up the periscope, into the chamber and onto the CP. We will then use the central heating mask instead of the annular heating mask (in the location the annular heating mask would be ), and thus temporarily turn the annular heating beam path into the central heating beam path.

The first step we did was to use a HeNe beam to adjust the output beam splitter and the beamsplitter just before the on table power meter so that the front and back reflections were in the same plane (they werent installed that way). We then went all the way back to the first large gold mirror after the polarisers (which are after the beckhoff controlled HWP) and mirror by mirror in the annular (now temporary central heating) beam path made sure that they were set so that the beam was in a plane with the table at a height of 4 inches.

Once the beam got to the output beamsplittler, the beamsplitter and the last gold mirror before the periscope was used to align the beam to the irises that we had defined to put the beam correctly into the chamber. I roughly made sure that the beam transmitted through the output beam splitter was going to the on table power meter, and the beam path that would go to the FLIR camera was beam blocked as I no longer no that the beam path is correct (I removed the lens there so that needs to be reinstalled).

A HeNe beam was setup to trace through the irises (heading in direction of going towards the periscope). Once the optic beam path had been re-established I swapped out the 1" irises we had (which had clipping on the beam occuring) for 2" irises. We then inserted a 2 inch gold mirror into the path between the 2 irises and sent the HeNe beam down towards HAM5 and the target that we had set up at a distance that mimicks where the CP would be. An "X" was marked on the card and the HeNe aligned to this "X' and the FLIR camera setup so that this spot was centered on the camera.

HeNe beam removed and the CO2 beam projected onto the target. Good to see that the CO2 beam appears to hit exaclty where the HeNe indicated it should (lets out sigh of relief)....so this should mean that the CO2 beam should go into the chamber and onto the CP correctly. Whilst doing the projection we also placed in the central heating mask (it has been rotated 90 degrees so that the rejected beam is directed towards the edge of the table not the center of the table as indicated in the drawing because the beam dump would not fit) and used the projection to help center the mask. Worked well...and success was declared. I dont have the pics of the projection, but pics were taken.

All beams have beam blocked so that if wanted to run the laser around the clock we can (we wont be until given the go ahead by the local LSO). A bugzilla list (Bug 868...https://services.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/integrationissues/show_bug.cgi?id=868) has been made of the tasks that can think of that are still outstanding/need to be done for this table.

One concern: A couple times today we had further issues with the HWP. We would dial up an angle for it to go to, the MEDM screens would indicae that the HWP was at the angle we had requested yet it physically was at a different angle. I have asked Thomas to look into tomorrow as this is a concern.

Pic:

TCScurrentalignmentstanding shows a quick summary of whats aligned and what still needs to be done