Tracker Status

October 15, 2004

 

Tray Assembly

-        Plyform has been building up speed with fabrication of bare tray panels.  Already 44 have been delivered to Pisa for ESPI testing.

-        Plyform is also progressing with the new Kapton and Tungsten bonding processes.  The first 3 trays are in thermal-vacuum testing today in Rome.  10 more will go to Rome for testing by next Wednesday.

-        Work is in progress today at G&A, using test-article trays and nonflight MCMs, to verify the revised assembly procedures devised to ensure clearance between MCM connectors and sidewalls.  Assuming good results with that, work will begin on the Tower-A trays early next week.

 

Sidewalls

-        A large shipment of prepreg went from COI to Italy and is in a freezer in Italian customs.  As usual, the hard part is getting it from customs to Plyform.  The remaining shipments will follow very soon.

 

MCMs

-        Nearly all MCMs in stock at SLAC fail the conformal-coating inspections.  The biggest problem is contamination of the connector pins by the coating material.

-        Rework procedures are in work to begin, hopefully next week, rework of the MCMs that failed inspection.

-        5 tall MCMs have been inspected and will be hand carried to Pisa this weekend, to complete the Tower-A complement.

-        39 MCMs ready for Tower-A were shipped to Pisa.  These cables passed the completed inspection plans.

-        Testing of the new pitch-adapter electrical test fixture is beginning today.

-        Production is at 363 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 is still halted at Teledyne pending various process improvements, including a bakeout of boards before soldering.  This work is in progress, and the team is working with SLAC purchasing on the contractual issues.

-        An MRB is being held today on the clock-duty-cycle timing-margin issues.

 

Flex Circuit Cables

-        All coupons tests from the new Parlex process passed, with in particular no issues with the internal via connections.

-        The backup plan involving splicing together two shorter cables has progressed and looks promising.

 

Tower Assembly

-        A Tower-0 sidewall was removed to investigate the one cable that had not functioned properly.  The fault was located in the connector on the top-most MCM (the cable was fine).  This will be investigated more after disassembly.  However, that particular MCM was a non-flight production version that had already been used for much testing (i.e. lots of mate/demates).

-        Besides the tray assembly in full progress in Italy, a lot of work is in progress at SLAC to provide the remaining tower assembly parts and GSE, including improvements to several of the tools, based on Tower-0 experience.  The tall pole appears to be getting a full set of 8 flight-certified flex-circuit cables.