Tower A:
- Tower-A receiving, unpacking, and setup at SLAC went quickly with no problems.
- The comprehensive performance test of Tower A at SLAC was
completed, although analysis of cosmic-ray data is in progress. Noise measurements on the channels indicated
no change in quality of the tower with respect to the last tests in
- We found that the problem of a few GTRC chips not responding after power-on could be cured by sending a hard reset after power-on. Work is in progress to understand why the GTRC state machine doesn’t always get itself into the right state shortly after power-on without an explicit reset pulse.
- Anomalies in the power measurement were understood to be due to the GTFE DACs not being put into a specific state before doing the measurement. There are now no unresolved test issues.
- EMI taping will take place starting this weekend, and the EMI acceptance tests will be done next week.
- At present SLAC is working with the test scripts that will be used to make the final tests and calibrations required before handoff to I&T.
Tower B:
- Vibration testing completed with no problem.
- The comprehensive performance test done after vibration was successful and indicated no deterioration of the tower since before vibration.
- Preparations are in progress for starting the thermal-vacuum test on Monday. The TRR will be held Sunday.
Tray Assembly:
- About ˝ of the Tower-1 trays are assembled and ready for test. The remaining ones will be completed next week.
MCMs:
- SLAC is scrambling to ship MCMs to
- MCM production work has focused on the pitch-adapter cracking impasse. Finally we have proved to ourselves that the critical problem really is the Parlex pitch adapters from the 2nd and 3rd lots. The test result reported here last week was bogus. The new pitch adapters really do crack 100% when bent around a smooth 1mm radius (even without tension added), while the old ones, supposedly from the same design and process, have no such problem. The prototypes from Dyconex also have no problem with that bend, so getting a production order is a priority while we sort out in parallel what happened at Parlex.
- This delay in restarting MCM production, because of the pitch
adapters, is critical and will result in a production halt in
Cables:
- Cables for Tower-1 will be hand carried to
- 8 EGSE cables for stacked tray testing will also be
carried to
- We are still experiencing more delays in getting shipments from Parlex, so cables are only barely keeping up with production, with a mad scramble at SLAC needed for each tower.