 Wed Aug 2 17:02:38 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update
|
Moved the temperature sensor on the PID controller to one of the switch backs on the lid.
Also started the next bake with both PID controllers
set to 150 degC. When leaving the temperature sensors above the chamber read 119 C and 83 C. These sensors are on the chamber wall and flange in front
of the turbo pump respectively.
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Thu Aug 3 16:00:25 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update
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Check on the temperature of the bake today to see the equilibrium temperatures. With both of the PID controllers set to 150 C, the temperature sensors for
the wall of the chamber and the flange in front of the turbo pump read: 125 C and 90 C respectively. At these temperatures the bake would need to last
at least a week unless the temperature were to be increased. |
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Thu Aug 3 17:47:51 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC Heating System Update
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Did some further testing to determine if it was within reason to increase the temperature of the chamber. I used a thermometer and pulled back some
insulation to test many points on the chamber. Mainly focused on the barrel and the bottom lid of the chamber to see if it was possible to increase the
temperature of just the PID controller that is powering the bottom half of the chamber.
Found that the barrel of the chamber seems to be hotter |
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Fri Aug 4 15:21:33 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update
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Checked on Bake 3 today and the temperature sensors read 126 C and 91 C for the chamber barrel and turbo pump flange respectively. These were reached while
the PID controllers were set to 150 C. |
Tue Aug 8 15:31:26 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC Heating System Update 10x
|
Vacuum Chamber equilibrium temperature for bake 3 are 126 C and 88 C for the chamber wall and turbo pump flange respectively. There were reached with
the PID controllers both being set to 150 C.
Also noticed some discoloration around the port insulation. It could be burned from being exposed
to the heater tape directly without insulation or it could be that the insulation, which looks much different, is depositing something around the ports.
The |
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Thu Aug 10 14:36:00 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update
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Came in to install one of the Full range gauges. Checked the temperature first of the cross and it was reading 30 C. After installing the gauge above the
RGA line the controller was reading 2E-1 torr. Installed the other full range gauge to confirm this and it also read that pressure. There may be a leak
so I will let it sit for a bit and then perform a Helium leak test. |
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Thu Aug 10 18:32:39 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update
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[Dr. Richardson, Aiden]
DO NOT TOUCH ANY VALVES ON THE CHAMBER. THERE IS A PRESSURE DIFFERENTIAL BETWEEN THE RGA LINE,
TURBO PUMP LINE AND THE MAIN VOLUME. THE TURBO PUMP WILL BE DESTROYED IF OPENED.
Closed the valves to the turbo pump line and RGA line.
Turned the turbo pump back on and saw that the pressure in the RGA Line and Turbo pump line was going down so there was no large leak within that line |
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Fri Aug 11 18:32:00 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update 11x
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[Dr. Richardson, Aiden] Large Update
Removed most of the insulation on the chamber in order to pull back some of the heater tape to get
to the flange connecting the bypass line to the valve under the RGA line. Most of the heater tape on the bottom half of the chamber was pulled off and
the rest will need to be removed as well in order to place the start of the heater tape on the barrel of the chamber rather than one of the flanges.
Engaged |
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Tue Aug 15 16:04:23 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC Heating System Update 6x
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Pulled off the rest of the heater tape along with the aluminum tape left behind. The aluminum tape adhesive left behind a ton of junk on the walls
of the chamber. This is probably due to excessive heating. In order to get the adhesive off I sprayed a vector alpha wipe with acetone and wiped down the
walls. This took a lot of acetone to get it off.
|
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Thu Aug 17 15:02:44 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC Heating System Update 11x
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Put the heating tape back on and made sure to have 4 coils around the barrel of the chamber. To make this happen I did not put any heater tape on the
ports but made sure to place some of the heater no more than 1 inch away from the ports. Also re-placed some of the heating sensors. For the PID controllers
there is one sensor placed on the lid and one sensor placed on the barrel. For the temperature alarms one sensor was placed near the flange of the turbo |
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Thu Aug 17 15:18:48 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC Heating System Update
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Relocated the PID controllers so that the heating tape could be plugged in. In the picture the left one controls the top half of the chamber along with
the RGA line and has its sensor on the lid near a fold. The right one controls the bottom half along with the turbo pump line and the bypass line and has
its sensor on the barrel of the chamber. The chamber is almost ready to bake again and just needs to have the full range gauges and RGA electronics box |
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Mon Aug 21 17:13:25 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vacuum Chamber Baking Update
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Came in to take RGA data and found the turbo pump drawing .38 Amps. This was much higher than what it was on Friday. I investigated and found that
the breaker had flipped controlling the power strip that the scroll pump was on. The scroll pump was thus not running. I flipped the breaker back and turned
the scroll pump back on. I do not know if this will be a reoccurring problem as this has happened before, or if this was due to the storm. Either way the |
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Mon Aug 28 14:43:50 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vacuum Chamber Baking Update
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The PID controllers were turned off on Friday and the chamber was left to cool over the weekend. Just took data and it looks like signal to noise ratio
is pretty bad again. I do not know if this means we need a hotter bake or if the chamber needs some more time to cool down. I will overlay this data and
make sure to take a second set a bit later to compare. Some good news though is that the chamber has reached a pressure below 10e-8 torr with the full |
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Tue Aug 29 19:09:21 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vacuum Chamber Baking Update
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Here are some more plots with the RGA data take August 29. It seems that more pumping time has led to the HC levels being dramatically reduced compared
to only a day ago. The pressure also rises significantly when turning on the RGA filament and it doe not go back down to the pressure before turning it
on while the RGA is still running. The pressure after I left was 6.86 e-8 torr. |
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Tue Aug 29 22:07:38 2023, Aiden, Update, General, Electronic Bench
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Dr Richardson is working on mounting more power supplies in the server rack and is using the electronics bench. Be aware to not move anything on the bench
itself. |
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Thu Aug 31 12:56:29 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vacuum Chamber Baking Update
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Took some more RGA data to see if the HC levels have further declined since bake 4 and it seems that it has started to plateau with August 29 160.7 e-10
Torrl/s and August 31 giving 158.4 e-10 Torrl/s. The pressure of the chamber before taking data was 5.1 e-8 Torr. I have attached an overlay of the data
from August 29 and August 31. It seems that the extra two days has not noticeably changed the data and another bake will most likely be needed to meet |
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Fri Sep 1 19:21:19 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update
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Started bake 5 today. This will hopefully be a longer and hotter bake with it lasting 6-7 days at around 150 C. The pressure in the chamber before removing
the full range gauge and RGA box was 5.01 e-8 torr. The Argon leak was also left open for this bake to hopefully get rid of particulates on it. I also
put the heater tape I removed last time back onto the RGA cross. This made the heating up process take much longer as I had to not increase too much or |
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Tue Sep 5 16:43:19 2023, Aiden, Update, General, VAC System Heating Update
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Checked on bake 5 today after 3 days of equilibrium. The RGA cross is at 106 C and the turbo pump cross is at 74 C. This was reached while the PID controllers
were at 140 C. I will now slowly raise the temperature to 150 on the PID controllers and see if the difference in the RGA cross can be reduced. |
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Fri Sep 8 16:10:43 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update
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Turned off the PID controllers to let the chamber cool down. Final temperatures for the RGA cross and Turbo pump cross were 113 C and 80 C respectively.
The system should be cool enough to start taking measurements on Monday. |
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Mon Sep 11 16:02:42 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update
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The chamber has cooled down from bake 5 and I took the first set of data. The pressure measured during the RGA measurements reached 9.98 e-8 torr. The data
shows that the chamber got dirtier, however this has been the case for every first scan after a bake so I assume there are still some more hydrocarbons
to be vacuumed out and that the second scan will most likely give a better idea of where the chamber is at. After turning off the RGA the pressure immediately |
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Tue Sep 12 15:31:31 2023, Aiden, Update, Clean & Bake, Clean and Bake Batch 15
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Cleaned and Baked the SS screws for the heater mount. Check the Clean and Bake data base on the website to get a precise list of the parts and their numbers.
Cleaned them with liquinox in the ultra sonic washer for 10 minutes. Then dried them with nitrogen. Then put the stainless steel parts into the oven for
the following steps; 1. Ramp to 100 C in 15 minutes 2. Dwell at 100 C for 30 minutes 3. Ramp to 200 C in 30 minutes 4. Dwell at 200 C for 48 hours 5. Turn |
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Fri Sep 15 17:33:35 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vacuum Chamber Baking Update
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Took some more RGA data and see that the chamber has gotten much cleaner since monday. Next step would be another bake with some focus around heating the
RGA filament more. The pressure in the chamber before testing was 5.32 e-8 torr. |
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Thu Sep 28 15:17:13 2023, Aiden, Update, Clean & Bake, Clean and Bake Batch 16
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| Bagged and Tagged the parts from batch 15 and started baking batch 16 which includes the 6" to 8" reducer. |
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Tue Oct 3 15:07:48 2023, Aiden, Update, Clean & Bake, Clean and Bake Batch 17
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| Cleaned and baked all the stainless steel parts in Batch 17. Check data base for more details on this. |
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Sat Oct 7 17:10:27 2023, Aiden, Update, Clean & Bake, Clean and Bake Batch 18
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Bagged and tagged the parts from Batch 17 and placed them in the clean room on the optic table. Also started an aluminum batch of parts that included the
kf clamps and the heater mounting parts. |
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Mon Oct 9 21:41:24 2023, Aiden, Update, Clean & Bake, Clean and Bake Batch 19
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| Bagged and tagged the parts from batch 18. Started the Copper batch that includes all the gaskets needed to start the vacuum chamber upgrade. |
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Thu Oct 12 12:11:10 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vacuum chamber Helium leak test
|
[Aiden, Tyler, Peter, Jon]
Continued tightening bolts on the turbo pump and 6"-8" reducer to reduce the leak. The final leak test values for the
turbo pump flange was 3.0 e-9 and the other 6"-8" reducer flange was 4.0 e-9.
We will continue to let it pump down as the screws could not
be tightened anymore. Looks like new gaskets will be needed to reduce the leaking on these flanges.
|
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Thu Oct 19 11:41:04 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vacuum Chamber Baking Update 6x
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[Aiden, Tyler, Mohak]
Took some RGA data when we came into the room. The pressure of the chamber was 8.63e-8 Torr before turning on the RGA filament.
We saw the usual spike in pressure when the filament was initially turned on. Took some data and saw that the chamber was definitely dirtier since the
vacuum upgrade. See figures below.
Put the heater tape back onto the section that was removed. We may need to rearrange the heater tape again |
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Thu Oct 26 13:00:45 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vacuum Chamber Baking Update
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Bake 6 was turned off on Monday. Tooke RGA data today and have posted the data below. The pressure of the chamber after taking data was 3.22 e-8 Torr. The
chamber HC levels are still not low enough but I feel with more pumping it will go down as the RGA scan was still slowly going down during the data taking. |
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Fri Oct 27 15:16:31 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vacuum Leak Test
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Leak tested the worst flanges on the chamber after moving it and after bake 6. The 6 inch flange connected to the 8 inch reducing nipple is now leaking
at 1.5 e-9, previously at 4 e-9. The 8 inch flange connected to the turbo pump is now leaking at 1.9 e-9, previously at 3 e-9. This means that the baking
most likely improved the seals on these flanges and a hotter bake might fix the leaks for good. |
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Tue Oct 31 19:46:35 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update
|
Started bake 7 on Monday but found issues with the heating as the cross in front of the RGA got way too hot too quickly. This resulted in shutdowns of the
heater tape while I could still only set the main PID controller for the lid to 75C. Tuesday I moved the PID controller sensors to be on the cross in front
of the RGA and on the Reducing nipple. I then placed the alarm sensors onto the lid of the chamber and the barrel. This should hopefully prevent excessive |
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Wed Nov 1 20:22:07 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update
|
Raised the PID controller temperature to 105C today as at that temperature the lid and the barrel temperature sensors were reading around 120C. I will check
again tomorrow to see if there is any room for increase after equilibrium. |
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Thu Nov 9 13:48:47 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vacuum Chamber Baking Update
|
After bake 7 was stopped on Wednesday morning (11,8,2023), I took RGA data of the chamber to compare to a later scan that will be done on Monday to make
sure the chamber has reached its lowest pressure. Below are the graphs. |
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Wed Nov 15 21:52:33 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vacuum Chamber Baking Update
|
| Took RGA data before running the degas mode. Made sure to close off the main volume before running the degas. And left the filament on. |
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Thu Nov 16 19:32:31 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC HC Levels Update
|
Took some more RGA data today and overlaid it with data taken from October 19. I added a red line that symbolizes where all amu peaks above 44 need to be
bellow as well as a black square around the 44th amu peak. The chamber is very close to being meeting LIGO's vacuum chamber standards. |
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Mon Nov 20 20:37:45 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Clean and Bake Batch 20
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[Aiden, Luis]
Started to clean and bake the macor parts for the FROSTI reflector. Per LIGO documentation cleaned the macor in liquinox for 10 minutes and
put them in the oven at 200 degC for 24 hours. |
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Mon Nov 20 20:45:16 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Leak Test
|
[Aiden, Luis]
Tested every weld and flange to find leaks. Only found that the flange on the turbo pump and reducing nipple was still at 2e-9
torr on the leak. The chamber still rose in pressure when the two gate valves were closed but no noticeable leak could be found on the lid or welds. |
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Tue Nov 21 22:09:44 2023, Aiden, Update, General, Testing Parts 8x
|
[Aiden, Luis]
Luis and Aiden vented the chamber today. We closed off the RGA section and then proceeded to open the the vent on the main body after
turning off the turbo and backing pump. We then opened the lid and placed in all the stainless steel hardware that will be used in evaluating the FROSTI
optics and heater elements. We also inspected the weldments before closing it up. Check the clean and bake data base where there is now a new section outlining |
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Mon Nov 27 19:34:50 2023, Aiden, Update, Clean & Bake, Clean and Bake Batch 20 Bagging
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| Bagged and tagged bath 20 which included the macor hardware and place it inside the clean room on the table. |
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Wed Nov 29 21:13:32 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update
|
Started Bake 8 today. Set the PID controllers to 120 C and will check in the morning for equilibrium temperatures for the lid and chamber wall. The chamber
pressure was 2.13 e-8 torr before taking off the full range gauges.
After the bake is done on Saturday it will be cooled down and RGA data will
be taken to measure the out gassing rate of the stainless steel fasteners inside the chamber. Then on Tuesday we will plan to vent and open the chamber |
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Thu Nov 30 13:58:18 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update
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[Aiden]
Came into the lab in the morning to check on the chamber heating. I decided to set the PID controllers to 110C rather than 120C as the chamber
lid and wall were reading near 140C. With the PID controllers at 110C the chamber lid and wall now read 126C and 132C. Currently the PID controllers are
placed on the cross in front of the RGA and the reducing nipple in front of the turbo pump. I believe this is a good equilibrium and will leave the tape |
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Sat Dec 2 18:10:23 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update
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[Aiden]
Turned off the heating tape today in anticipation to take more RGA data on Sunday or Monday morning before the meeting. |
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Mon Dec 4 11:19:50 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vacuum Chamber Baking Update
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[Aiden]
Took some RGA data of the chamber after it has been cooling down. I do not believe that this data accurately shows the HC levels in the chamber
as the pressure is still above where it was at before the bake and was still falling. I believe more time is needed to let the pressure fall and for the
RGA filament to remain on to return to a point where the data can be trusted. |
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Thu Dec 7 12:42:42 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vacuum Chamber Baking Update
|
After leaving the RGA on for a few days the chamber has settled at 2.01 e-8 torr. I also have good news that the chamber looks to be even cleaner as the
HC levels are now the lowest they have been being at 26 e-10 Torr l/s. |
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Fri Dec 15 14:03:02 2023, Aiden, HowTo, VAC, Vacuum Chamber Opening
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[Aiden]
1. Turn off the RGA filament and disconnect it.
2. Record the pressure and then close the angle valve and gate valve on the RGA line
to isolate it from the system.
3. Turn off the backing and turbo pump and let the turbo pump spin to a stop by slowly leaking the chamber. The slower
the safer.
4.Slowly open the vents on the chamber and the turbo pump. Making sure not to raise the pressure too fast.
5. Once done venting |
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Sun Dec 17 19:43:18 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vac Heating Update
|
[Aiden]
I measured the temperature of the flanges where some of the electronics will go and I found that the RGA flange was at 55C and the two full
range gauges were at 65C. I also stopped bake 9 to cool down for measurement. |
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Mon Dec 18 15:51:49 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Heating Update
|
After letting the chamber cool down I put the electronics back on and turned the RGA element back on. No data has been taken yet as to let the pressure
continue to fall as the RGA is powered. |
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Tue Dec 19 15:45:05 2023, Aiden, Update, VAC, Vacuum Chamber Baking Update
|
| Took RGA data for the macor parts inside of the chamber. With the Ar open the HC levels read 30 torrl/s which is around where it was before the bake. |
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Mon Jan 8 20:24:53 2024, Aiden, Update, General,
|
[Jon, Aiden]
Installed the heater elements into their fixture and prepped the cables by twisting the wires into pairs. We also installed the pins
onto the wires and placed them into the peek DB 25 connector. The installation tool we had did not fit the pin size we had so the pins needed to be installed
by hand by opening the connector and holding them in place. In the future we will need to make sure we twist the wires together, group them, and then splice |
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Tue Jan 9 16:35:09 2024, Aiden, Update, VAC, VAC System Leak and Heating
|
[Luis, Luke, Aiden]
Leak tested each flange and weld and only found two flanges to have noticeable leaks with the electron multiplier on. These were
the turbo pump flange and the RGA flange that connects to the cross. The RGA one is rather new as it has not had a measurable leak before and it was around
2 e-8. We then applied the new sealant to these two flanges as directed by the instructions on the packaging.
Then after waiting a few minutes for |