Tracker Status

July 23, 2004

Tower-A Tray Panels

- Production is getting back on track following the problems with

Kapton adhesion to the tungsten. The tungsten foils have been

bead blasted with a 1-micron roughness, and plans are being

finalized to prepare the Kapton surface also.

- Plyform has committed to a schedule for the Tower-A trays and

will work Saturdays through August 6 to complete the work by

that date on all Tower-A trays plus some spares.

- The TRR for the Tower-A bottom tray static test was completed this week.

MCMs

- 222 MCMs have been produced, and 194 have been received by SLAC

- 109 of them have been reworked with 75-ohm resistors for the clock

bus terminations. The rework is proceding rapidly, and finally

SLAC purchasing authorized a PO change for Teledyne to start putting

the 75-ohm resistors on in production.

- Only 2 flight trays will have MCMs with 100-ohm termination, as a

stock of reworked MCMs is now in Italy.

- Some of the revised pitch adapters finally arrived, and now there will

be a push to qualify them in the process and get more ordered.

Tray Assembly (MCM and ladder integration)

- 2 flight trays have trailblazed the entire process through MCM mounting,

ladder mounting, wire bonding, and encapsulation with excellent results

so far.

- G&A did a beautiful job of developing the MCM attachment, wire bonding,

and encapsulation processesover the past few months, and on these trays

the number of bad channels (out of >6000), measured before encapsulation,

could be counted on one hand and was far below the maximum allowed. Only

2 channels were missing the wire-bond connection. The cause was found to

be contamination on the pitch adapter circuit. Those bonds were reworked

and a new, more aggressive cleaning of the pitch adapter will be done

in the future.

- Early next week the encapsulated trays will be functionally tested and

then put through thermal vacuum cycles as final qualification of the

process.

- G&A has agreed to defer vacations until the Tower A trays all are

assembled. We expect that the last tray will be done and ready for

testing around August 8.

Sidewall Assembly,

- Plyform will have the Tower-A sidewalls completed before the August

vacation shutdown.

- SLAC is preparing the PO for the remaining prepreg needed for the

flight towers.

Flex-Circuit Cables

- Coupons from the first cables were sent to NASA for testing.

- Parlex agreed upon a new delivery schedule for the remaining flight

cables which supports the Tracker schedule.

Heat straps

- The first sets of heat straps are in Italy ready for their incoming

inspection. The tie-down bars need to be modified by cutting them

from 1 piece to 2, to facilitate installation (the drawings have

been so modified).

Interface Hardware

- The Tower-A hardware will be shipped to Italy next week. There was

a delay with the hex bushing, which was originally made from the

wrong material and had to be redone. The delay had no impact on

Tower A, however.

Cable Corner Brackets

- The design was signed off this week, and procurement has begun. These

are the last pieces of Tracker flight hardware to be designed.

Tower Fasteners:

- The M2.5 100-degree head screws were inspected and are good to go.

- The 2mm pins are also inspected and ready.

Tower Assembly

- The detailed procedure documents and assembly drawings are still in work.

- The CMM-based alignment procedure was successfully developed and tested.

The cones can be readily adjusted to better than the needed precision.

- Assembly of Tower-A is scheduled for the last week of August.

Environmental Test

- INFN located a TQCM to be used at least for Tower A testing.

- The environmental tests for Tower A should be done in the time frame of

September 6 through September 17.

MGSE

- The cable holding plate was completed.

- The lifting fixture was proof loaded and is ready to ship.

- The inner shipping container was assembled and will be proof loaded

next week.

- The cactus-arm cable bending tool is in the shop.

- The tooling-ball nests are in the shop.

- 18 vibe fixtures are still in fabrication.

- The outer shipping container has been spec'ed out and a print is

in preparation for review. An environmental recorder with battery

and memory sufficient for the entire trip to SLAC was found and is

being procured.