Oct 17-21 - Trip report

Jim Martin

1. Visited Plyform (Fulvia Caria, Luisella Vigiani) with R. Bagagli and N. Menon.

-- Reviewed defective honeycomb issue, and Plyform's NCR forms and plans. The honeycomb arrived about two weeks prior; photos were sent back the previous Wednesday. Plyform will carry out 100% inspection (about 1 week to do this) and then complete one NCR for all the honeycomb. To date, they have received 67 mid-tray pieces of honeycomb, and 84 heavy-tray pieces.

-- Kapton - has not been delivered yet; when is it expected? Also, one of the team suggested we carry out an ESD analysis of the Kapton. When it arrives, INFN intends to carry out 100% non-destructive inspection (holographic).

-- Also reviewed tray assembly tooling and Plyform's preparations for flight tray production - the latter is planned to start on 17 November. Flight closeout inserts are planned to start 1 November - 40 closeouts have been machined so far.

-- EM sidewalls: Single width sidewall forming plates (10mm x 70cm x 42cm) arrived 16 Oct; these are thicker by 2x than those used in July. In addition, over the past few weeks, Plyform has conducted studies to gain control of the polymerization cycle and establish the optimum thickness for the forming plates. In tests with 10mm x 40cm x 40cm, they found the edge "waste" region to be about 1.5cm in width; the present plates were specified accordingly. If foil is delivered on the 21st, they need about two weeks to laminate sidewalls and install inserts.

-- Flight sidewalls: have not received an order yet - will need approx 6 weeks to order and get material from COI, elsewhere.

Reviewed funding w. Ronaldo: ASI has declared that INFN cannot place flight production contracts directly - they must be placed by an ASI contractor, which will be G&A - this will cost more money which Ronaldo must find somehow. (Certain details have been left out at Ronaldo's request - I have them if needed.)

2. Visited G&A

-- Reviewed handling, ladder inspection, testing, assembly, wire bonding. Approximately 825 ladders have been assembled to date, of which approx 650 have been through metrology and electrical testing. No problems have shown up in testing, i.e., they have produced a very high quality output to date. They anticipate being able to produce 50 ladders per day at the peak.

3. Visited Alenia

-- Reviewed facilities for carrying out EM and Flight HW environmental testing

4. Visited INFN

-- Reviewed schedule for EM, clean room and other facilities, and strategy for replacing the sidewalls

ACTIONS and POSSIBLE ACTIONS for UCSC/SLAC

-- Send email to Ronaldo et al: hiring of Dave Rich, and his role

-- Confirm to Sandro that the mini-sidewalls do not need to be painted

-- Still needed from SLAC: foil, Kapton, Nusil, final drawings for top & bottom trays

-- Finalize drawings soon - and make sure they are final

-- Kapton suggestion: arrange for an ESD analysis of the Kapton

-- NCR suggestion: SLAC establish a server for NCRs, that could be used via Internet browser from any of the vendor sites