Tracker Status

September 24, 2004

 

Tray Assembly

-        Work progressed on improving the Plyform facilities and procedures per the ART report.  A tent is being ordered, to be installed in the cleanroom before October 4.

-        The etching of tiles in Italy appears to have been successful.  The coupon tests showed good peel strength from the bond to the primed tungsten.  Three tray test articles were assembled, two with primed tiles and one unprimed.  They will be thermal-vacuum tested on Tuesday.

-        Production of bare trays progressed at Plyform, with 9 done and 20 to be ready by the end of next week.

-        Progress was made at G&A to understand the connector/sidewall interference problem.  It appears that it was a process problem that will be straightforward to solve without retooling.

 

MCMs

-        Production is at 342 units delivered to SLAC, of 576 needed for 16 towers, plus 38 needed for the electronics group and 72 more needed for the two spare towers.

-        The production halted the last 2 days of this week for lack of PWBs.  A pile of them had to be sent back to the machining vendor because of unsatisfactory machining of the radius.  Boards will be hand delivered Monday morning to restart the line.

-        A detailed specification for the conformal coating inspection and rework requirements was completed and is under review.  The Tracker team must have this settled immediately, as we have to deliver at least a tower’s worth of MCMs to Italy end of next week, in order not to incur further delays!

-        Another burn-in of 36 MCMs is ready to go but will be held off until Tuesday due to power shutdowns over the weekend and our need to conduct a special test on Monday.

-        Work progressed on the final report on MCM/ASIC qualification testing.

-        Several non-flight MCMs continue to undergo 200 thermal cycles to investigate the effects on pitch adapters and conformal coating.

-        Progress was made on understanding issues with high-voltage failures on some MCMs and timing-margin failures on others.  Tests are in progress to resolve, hopefully, both of those issues.

 

Flex Circuit Cables

-        A meeting was held to review the Parlex cause and corrective action report for the cracking between via barrels and inner layers. 

-        We still need cause and corrective action from Parlex for the annular ring issue.

 

Tower Assembly

-        The trial tower assembly (Tower-0) progressed.  All of the trays are stacked and cabled, and cosmic ray data are being taken over the weekend.  One of the 8 cables failed to function.  Since it is redundant, all active layers can be read out.  The work will continue through the rest of the procedure, including sidewall attachment and alignment before going back to find the root cause of the cable problem.