ELOG 40m

end station sus front-end bug fix

SUS

Quote:

installed and started new susEtmx.o and susEtmy.o to fix a problem with ETMY optical lever variables.

What Alex means is that the EPICS values for the ETMY optical levers were being clobbered in the RFM. The calculations were being done correctly in the FE, so the DAQ/testpoints were working--it was just the EPICS/RFM communication via c1losepics that was bugged. This was a result of the recent SUS code changes to accept inputs from the ASS for adaptive feedforward.

438

Tue Apr 22 22:19:02 2008

In the interests of tacit communication of scientific knowledge, I here reveal a nugget of knowledge which may or may not prove useful to new LIGOites: sometimes when front-end machines are rebooted, the hardware they control can wind up in a state which is not accurately represented by the EPICS values you may see. This can be easily rectified by momentarily changing the EPICS settings in question. For reference, this came up tonight in the context of the whitening gain sliders for the TransMon QPDs.

442

Thu Apr 24 14:10:26 2008

Rob, Johnnie

We made some progress on locking last night (Wed night), namely that we were able to handoff (briefly) the CARM-MCL path the REFL-DC error signal. We tried this because we suspect that the reason the PO-DC is not a good CARM error signal is because at low powers, the dc light level in the recycling cavity is dominated by the +f2 RF sideband. Thus, REFL-DC should work a bit better at low powers, which it did. It wasn't super stable, though, so this will require a bit of work to make the transition reliable & stable. The next things to work on include setting the AO path gain properly and possibly going to higher arm powers before handing off (thus increasing the discriminant).

Another thing we found is that the alignment scripts are not working in an ideal fashion. Running the alignment scripts for the two arms (XARM & YARM) leaves the Michelson badly misaligned, making it impossible to get good DRM alignment. This will have to be fixed.

456

Sun Apr 27 18:11:58 2008

The testpoint manager (which runs on fb40m) crashed this afternoon. Upon re-starting it, I found there was a rogue dtt process on op440m and also a daqd daemon running on br40m. One or both of these caused the tpman to crash. br40m is the frame broadcaster, which is never used here as we don't run DMT. I killed the daqd process there.

The way to find if there is a rogue process is to watch the output to the console from the tpman when you start it:

Allocate new TP handle 56 by 131.215.113.203
Allocate new TP handle 57 by 131.215.113.203
Allocate new TP handle 58 by 131.215.113.203
Allocate new TP handle 59 by 131.215.113.203
Allocate new TP handle 60 by 131.215.113.203
Allocate new TP handle 61 by 131.215.113.203
Allocate new TP handle 62 by 131.215.113.203
Allocate new TP handle 63 by 131.215.113.203
Allocate new TP handle 64 by 131.215.113.203
Allocate new TP handle 65 by 131.215.113.203
Allocate new TP handle 66 by 131.215.113.203
Allocate new TP handle 67 by 131.215.113.203
Allocate new TP handle 68 by 131.215.113.203

If you see something like this, with a new TP handle being allocated every few seconds, you need to log in to the corresponding host and kill whatever process has run away.

464

Mon May 5 11:04:30 2008

Mafalda was not connected to the network, and so our DMF-based seisBLRMS has not been running for ~1 week. I traced this to a broken ethernet cable connecting mafalda to the network switch in the rack next to the B&W printer. This cable has a broken connector at the switch side, which means it can't stay connected if there's any tension. It needs to be replaced.

466

Tue May 6 17:28:39 2008

I am in the process of switching the POX166 and AP33 photodetectors, so that they become POX33 and AP166. The IFO_CONFIGURE buttons won't work until I finish.

467

Wed May 7 15:25:41 2008

Quote:

I am in the process of switching the POX166 and AP33 photodetectors, so that they become POX33 and AP166. The IFO_CONFIGURE buttons won't work until I finish.

Done. We're now in the 40m CDD configuration.

490

Wed May 21 15:21:33 2008

Computer Scripts / Programs

autolockers and cron

I added hourly cron jobs to op340m to ensure that

MC autolocker
FSS Slow Servo
PSL watch

are running. I've also edited the wiki procedure to reflect the fact that these no longer need to be restarted by hand.

507

Fri May 30 12:37:45 2008

Quote:

I relayed the optics for ETMY-oplev as shown in pictures below.
The reflected beam goes directly to the qpd

I turned on the servo. UGFs in PIT and YAW are ~3Hz. I had to flip the sign of the YAW.

531

Thu Jun 12 01:51:23 2008

rob, john

We've been working (nights) on getting the IFO locked this week. There's been fairly steady incremental progress each night, and tonight we managed to control CARM(MCL) using PO-DC, with the CARM(AO) path also on PO-DC. In the past, reaching this state has usually meant we're home free, as we could just crank the gain on the common mode servo and merrily reduce the CARM offset. Tonight, however, this state has been very twitchy, and efforts to ramp up the gain have been unsuccessful.

I've attached a diagram which I hope makes clear where we are in the stages of lock acquisition.

Attachment 1: lock_control_sequence.png

533

Thu Jun 12 15:55:15 2008

Quote:

Rob: Awesome figure. As you can imagine, I have lots of questions, and hope that you will consider this figure to be the beginning, leading to ever-more detailed versions. But for now, I just want to ask whether you understand *what* is twitchy, and what the twitchiness does to prevent you from taking this further?

I definitely don't understand what's twitchy, but I have suspicions. Tonight we'll try to start by revisiting the other loops (the non-CARM loops) and see how they're dealing with the changing power levels. It may be that the DARM loop is going unstable due to gain variations (due to either increasing power or to rotation of demod phase) or it could be the PODD (or SPOB) saturating with increased power in the recycling cavity. I just hope the glitchiness doesn't have a digital origin.

537

Wed Jun 18 00:19:29 2008

15 day trend of MOPA channels. The NPRO temperature fluctations are real, and causing the PMC to consistently run up against its rails. The cause of the temperature fluctations is unknown. This, combined with the MZ glitches and Miller kicking off DC power supplies is making locking rather tetchy tonight. Hopefully Yoichi will find the problem with the laser and fix it by tomorrow night.

Attachment 1: MOPAtrend.png

538

Wed Jun 18 16:07:57 2008

The RFM network tripped off around noon today. It's still down. The problem appears to be with the EPICS interface (c1dcuepics). Trying to restart one of the end stations yields the error: No response from EPICS.

Possible causes include (but not limited to): busted RFM card on c1dcuepics, busted PMC bus on c1dcuepics, busted fiber from c1dcuepics to the RFM switch. We need Alex.

551

Sun Jun 22 21:38:49 2008

Now that we're getting back into locking, it's nice to have a stable alignment of the interferometer.
Thus, after you're done with your experiment using subsets of the interferometer (such as a single arm),

please use the IFO_CONFIGURE screen, and click "Restore last Auto-Alignment" in the yellow "Full IFO" section.

If you don't know what this means/how to do this, you shouldn't be using the interferometer on your own.

583

Fri Jun 27 15:20:52 2008

I removed C1:LSC-XARM_CTRL from the frames and added C1:LSC-CARM_ERR

587

Sat Jun 28 03:10:25 2008

Quote:

C1susvme2 and C1iovme crashed which sent the optics swinging and tripped the watchdogs.

Koji and I were able to restore c1susvme2 without any trouble.

We have been unable to revive c1iovme. We have tried telneting in and running startup.cmd,
the process runs for a while then hangs with "DAQ init failed -- exiting".

Resetting the board doesn't help. I didn't try keying the whole crate.

All optics are back to normal with damping restored.

I tried keying the crate, then keying the DAQ controller & AWG, then powering down & restarting the framebuilder.
On coming up, the framebuild doesn't start a daqd process, and I can't get one to start by hand (it just prints "652", and then stops).
No error messages and daqd doesn't appear in the prstat.

I then tried keying the DAQ controller again (after the fb0 reboot), which blew the watchdogs on all the suspensions. So then I went around and keyed all the crates.

Now, the suspension controllers are back online. Still no c1iovme, and now the framebuilder/DAQ/AWG are also hosed. We can try keying all the crates again, in the order that Yoichi did last week.

After some more poking around, I found the daqd log file. It's now complaining about

Jun 28 03:00:39 fb daqd[546]: [ID 355684 user.info] Fatal error: channel `C1: PSL-FSS_MIXERM_F' is duplicated 126

This is the second error message like this. It first complained about C1: PSL-FSS_FAST_F, so I commented that out of C1IOOF.ini and rebooted the framebuilder (note this is an actual reboot of the full solaris machine). Eventually I discovered that C1IOOF.ini and C1IOO.ini are essentially identical. They presumably will keep getting these duplicate channel errors until one of them is completely removed.

C1IOO.ini has a modification time of seven PM on Friday night. Who did this and didn't elog it? I've now modified C1IOOF.ini, and I don't remember when it was last modified.

592

Sun Jun 29 14:53:02 2008

Quote:

All of the computers are now showing green lights.

Remaining problems:

Alignment scripts are failing with "ERROR: LDS - NDS server error #13"
I think this is a server transmission error.

Dataviwer shows all channels as zero.

Fixed. Just started the testpoint manager on fb40m.

su
/usr/controls/tpman &

614

Tue Jul 1 13:34:29 2008

Quote:

For some reason, the computers requiring startup.cmd (like c1lsc) halt after running this command. Actually the computer is running ok, but the command freezes. Basically, what it does is simply to load a kernel module. I don't know what is wrong.
Anyway, I just closed the terminal after running startup.cmd and it seems fine for now.

This is normal. On the linux RTFEs (Real-Time Front Ends), the real-time code totally hijacks the kernel, disallowing any interrupts. The system thus becomes totally unresponsive while the code is running, and communicates only through the RFM and the VME backplane.

615

Tue Jul 1 14:24:58 2008

Computer Scripts / Programs

HowTo

conlog time machine

I've written a perl script (now in the $SCRIPTS/general directory) which implements a "conlog restore" command, restoring channels matching a regexp to a given time using the conlog records and the EpicsTools.pm perl module. The script is called time_machine_conlog:

Quote:

op440m:~>time_machine_conlog

time_machine_conlog restores EPICS control settings using a conlog time
usage: time_machine_conlog [<--dryrun>] <date=yyyy/mm/dd,hh:mm:ss> <timezone> <regexp>

Can also accept a gps time, in which case timezone=gps.
Use the option <--dryrun> to see conlog output without restoring any settings.

EXAMPLE: time_machine_conlog 2008/05/30,12:00:00 PDT "C1:SUS-MC.*_(PIT|YAW)_COMM"

It sometimes returns an error message even when the command is successful--this is because conlog stores EPICS settings to an absurd level of precision, but ezcawrite will not write EPICS values to this level (or at least won't indicate if it did). I consider this a bug in ezcawrite so I'm not touching it.

The script is untested with regards to switch settings (such as ENABLE/DISABLE). It's mainly intended for numerical values.

617

Tue Jul 1 21:27:27 2008

Computer Scripts / Programs

HowTo

slider twiddling after reboot

Sometimes after we reboot the front-end machines, some of the hardware gets stuck in an unknown state. We generally fix this by twiddling EPICS settings, which refresh the hardware somehow and put it into a known state. I've started a script (slider_twiddle) which we can just run after reboots to do this for us. Right now it just has the QPD whitening gain settings. As we find more stuff, we can add to it. It's in $SCRIPTS/Admin/.

631

Thu Jul 3 13:54:26 2008

Does mDV work on rosalba? It can't find NDS_GetChannels. Looking on mafalda, I see that NDS_GetChannels is a mexglx. I think this means someone may need to compile it for 64-bit matlab before we can have mDV on rosalba. When that's done, we should get mDV running on megatron.

632

Thu Jul 3 16:18:51 2008

I used ligoDV to make some spectrograms of DARM_ERR (1), QPDX (2), and QPDY (3). These show the massive instability from 30-40Hz growing in the XARM in the last two minutes of a reasonably high power lock (arm powers up to 30). It's strange that it only shows up in one arm.

CARM is on PO-DC, for both the MCL and the AO path.
DARM is on AS166Q.

Attachment 1: darm_specg.png

Attachment 2: qpdx_specg.png

Attachment 3: qpdy_specg.png

655

Thu Jul 10 14:59:01 2008

RF common mode at zero offset

Locking

rob, john, yoichi

Last night we succeeded in reducing the CARM offset to zero.

We handed off control of the common mode servo from PO-DC to POX-I.

We pushed the common mode servo bandwidth to ~19kHz. Without the boosts, it had ~80 degs of phase margin. Didn't measure it after engaging the boosts (Boost + 1 superboost). Trying to engage the second superboost stage broke the lock.

The process is fully scripted, and the script worked all the way through several times.

The DARM ugf was ~200Hz. The RSE peak could clearly be seen. No optical spring, as expected (we're locking in anti-spring mode).

Engaging test mass de-whitening filters did not work (broke the lock).

I'm attaching a lock control sequence diagram and a trend of the arm power during a scripted up-sequence. I think the script can be sped up significantly (especially the long ramp period).

Up next:

Calibrated DARM spectrum
Noise hunting (start with dewhites)
DC - Readout
Lock to the springy side.

Attachment 1: lock_control_sequence_worked.png

Attachment 2: trendpowerbuild.png

658

Fri Jul 11 00:30:24 2008

Metaphysics

Computers

strange SUS controllers

rob, johnnieM

We were hampered early tonight by the fact that someone sneakily turned off the HP RF Ampflier on the AS table.

After that, we were hampered further by mode cleaner strangeness. It would occasionally spontaneously unlock & blow its watchdogs. It never made it through the ontoMCL script (putting DC-CARM onto the MCL). After some investigation, we found that c1susvme1 and c1susvme2 were running stochastically late (SYNC_FE != 0), even though their computation times never got above 61. Also, the end SUS controllers were never late.

Weird.

After rebooting the vertex SUS controllers and the c1lsc, things appear to be working again.

701

Fri Jul 18 23:24:24 2008

PMC PZT investigation

Quote:

I measured the HV coming to the PMC PZT by plugging it off from the PZT and hooking it up to a DVM.
The reading of DVM is pretty much consistent with the reading on EPICS. I got 287V on the DVM when the EPICS says 290V.

Then I used a T to monitor the same voltage while it is connected to the PZT. I attached a plot of the actual voltage measured by the DVM vs the EPICS reading.
It shows a hysteresis.
Also the actual voltage drops by more than a half when the PZT is connected. The output impedance of the HV amp is 64k (according to the schematic). If I believe this number, the impedance of the PZT should also be 64k. The current flowing the PZT is 1.6mA at 200V EPICS reading.
The impedance of the PZT directly measured by the DVM is 1.5M ohm, which is significantly different from the value expected above. I will check the actual output impedance of the HV amp later.
The capacitance of the PZT measured by the DVM is 300nF. I don't know if I can believe the DVM's ability to measure C.

I noticed that when a high voltage is applied, the actual voltage across the PZT shows a decay.
The second plot shows the step response of the actual voltage.
The voltage coming to the PZT was T-ed and reduced by a factor of 30 using a high impedance voltage divider to be recorded by an ADC.
The PMCTRANSPD channel is temporarily used to monitor this signal.
After the voltage applied to the PZT was increased abruptly (to ~230V), the actual voltage starts to exponentially decrease.
When the HV was reduced to ~30V, the actual voltage goes up. This behavior explains the weird exponential motion of the PZT feedback signal when the PMC is locked.
The cause of the actual voltage drop is not understood yet.
From the above measurements, we can almost certainly conclude that the problem of the PMC is in the PZT, not in the HV amp nor the read back.

I'd believe the Fluke's measurement of capacitance. Here's some info from PK about the PZT:

Quote:

But the PMC ones were something like
0.750 in. thick x 0.287 in. thick. 2 microns per 200 V displacement,
resonant frequency greater than 65 kHz. Typical capacitance is around 0.66
uF.

If the PZT capacitance has dropped by a factor of two, that seems like a bad sign. I don't know what to expect for a resistance value of the PZT, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's non-Ohmic. The 64k is the series resistor after the PA85, not the modeled resistance of the PZT itself.

702

Sat Jul 19 19:39:44 2008

PMC PZT investigation

Quote:

The 64k is the series resistor after the PA85, not the modeled resistance of the PZT itself.

Yes. What I meant was that because the measured voltage across the PZT was a half of the open voltage of the HV amp, the DC impedance of the PZT is expected to be similar to the output impedance of the HV amp. Of course, I don't think the DC impedance of a normal PZT should be such low.
I'm puzzled by the discrepancy between this expected DC impedance and the directly measured impedance by the Fluke DVM (1.5M Ohm).
One possibility is that the PZT leaks current only when a high voltage is applied.

714

Tue Jul 22 13:15:14 2008

Note from R. Abbott re: the PMC

Quote:

an email from Rich:

Your PZT is broken.

R

Quelle surprise

Frown

727

Wed Jul 23 21:48:30 2008

restore IFO when you're done with it

General

when you are done with the IFO, please click "Restore last auto-alignment" on the yellow IFO portion of the C1IFO_CONFIGURE.adl screen. Failure to comply will be interpreted as antagonism toward the lock acquisition effort and will be met with excoriation.

729

Thu Jul 24 01:04:01 2008

IFR2023A (aka MARCONI) settings

LSC

Quote:

P.S.: We made a test by changing the frequency of the local oscillator by a little bit and then coming back to the original value. We observed that the phase of the signal can change, so every time this frequency is moved the 3f demod phase need to be retuned.

We discovered this little tidbit in March, and remembered it tonight. Basically we found that whenever you change the frequency on one of these signal generators (and maybe any other setting as well), the phase of the signal can change (it's probably just the sign, but still...), meaning that you when you return settings to their intial value, not everything is exactly as it once was. For most applications, this doesn't matter. For us, where we use one Marconi to demodulate the product of two other Marconis, it means we can easily cause a great deal of grief for ourselves, as the demod phase for the double demod signals can appear to change.

Programmatically, what this means is that every time you touch a Marconi you must elog it. Especially if you change a setting and then put it back.

731

Thu Jul 24 02:57:26 2008

Arm cavity g-factor measurement

LSC

Quote:

So, now I feel that the method for the TEM01 quest should be reconsidered.

If we have any unbalanced resonance for the phase modulation sidebands, the offset of the error signal is to be observed even with the carrier exactly at the resonance. We don't need to shake or move the cavity mirrors.

Presence of the MC makes the things more complicated. Changing the frequency of the modulation that should go throgh the MC is a bit tricky as the detuning produces FM-AM conversion. i.e. The beam incident on the arm cavity may be not only phase modulated but also amplitude modulated. This makes the measurement of the offset described above difficult.

The setup of the abs length measurement (FSR measurement) will be easily used for the measurement of the transverse mode spacings. But it needs some more time to be realized.

We should be able to see 166MHz sideband resonances using the double demodulated photodetectors. With these, the 33MHz sidebands will be acting as LO when the 166MHz sideband (or mode) resonates. Some modeling may be necessary to determine if the SNR will be good enough to make this worthwhile, however.

732

Thu Jul 24 03:08:20 2008

rob, john, yoichi

Tonight we tried to move the 166MHz (f2) sideband frequency by changing the settings on the Marconi. Reducing the frequency by 4kHz reduced the amplitude of the 166MHz sidebands, but we were still able to lock the DRMI with the +-f2 sidebands by electronically compensating for the gain decrease, and also to lock the DRMI+2ARMs while resonating the -f2 sideband. No luck with the +f2.

Then we larkily tried increasing the frequency by 4kHz, which ~doubled the f2 sideband transmission through the MC. This means our frequencies/MC length have been mismatched for months. Apparently I explained the level of the f2 sidebands by just imagining that I'd (or someone) had set the modulation depth at that level some time in the past.

It's a miracle any locking worked at all in this state. Once this was done and we worked out a few kinks in the script, adjusting some gains to compensate, we managed to get the DRMI+2ARMS to lock a couple of times while resonating the +f2 sideband. It takes a while, but at least it happens. Tomorrow we'll measure the length of the mode cleaner properly and then try again. No need to vent just yet.

751

Mon Jul 28 23:41:07 2008

FSS/MC gains twiddled

I found the FSS and MC gain settings in a weird state. The FSS was showing excess PC drive and the MC wouldn't lock--even when it did, the boost stage would pull it off resonance. I adjusted the nominal FSS gains and edited the mcup and mcdown scripts. The FSS common gain goes to 30dB, Fast gain to 22dB, and MCL gain goes to 1 (which puts the crossover back around ~85 degrees where phase rises above 40 degrees).

752

Tue Jul 29 01:03:17 2008

IOO

MC length measurement

rob, yoichi

We measured the length of the mode cleaner tonight, using a variant of the Sigg-Frolov method. We used c1omc DAC outputs to inject a signal (at 2023Hz) into the AO path of the mode cleaner and another at DC into the EXT MOD input of the 166MHz IFR2023A. We then moved an offset slider to change the 166MHz modulation frequency until we could not see the 2023Hz excitation in a single-bounce REFL166. This technique could actually be taken a step further if we were really cool--we could actually demodulate the signal at 2023Hz and look for a zero crossing rather than just a powerspec minimum. In any case, we set the frequency on the Marconi by looking at the frequency counter when the Marconi setting+EXT MOD input were correct, then changed the Marconi frequency to be within a couple of Hz of that reading after removing the EXT MOD input. We then did some arithmetic to set the other Marconis.

The new f2 frequency is:


New              OLD
--------------------------
165983145        165977195

756

Tue Jul 29 14:38:02 2008

ETMY and PRM have EQ related problems

SUS

Quote:

The attached trend shows that ETMY and PRM both had large steps in their sensors
around the time of the EQ and didn't return afterwards. The calibration of the
OSEM sensors is ~0.5 mm/V. The PRM sensors respond when we give it huge biases
but there is very little change in the ETMY. Almost certainly true that the
optics have shifted in their wire slings and that we will have to vent to
examine and repair at least ETMY.

Jenne is looking at the spectra of the other suspensions to see if there is
other more subtle issues.

Some additional notes/update:

ETMY, PRM, & MC2 had OSEM signals at a rail (indicating stuck optics). Driving the optics with full scale DAC output freed ETMY and MC2, so while these may have shifted in their slings it may be possible to avoid a repair vent. PRM is still stuck. One OSEM appears to respond with full range to large drives, but the other three face OSEMS remain disturbingly near the rail (HIGH, which is what would happen if a magnet fell off).

757

Tue Jul 29 18:15:36 2008

I used the SUS DRIFT MON screen to return the MC suspensions to near their pre-quake values. This required fairly large steps in the angle biases. Once I returned to the printed values on the DRIFT screen (from 3/08), I could see HOM flashes in the MC. It was then pretty easy to get back to a good alignment and get the MC locked.

771

Wed Jul 30 15:28:08 2008

By using a combination of the SUS-DRIFT mon screen and the optical levers (which turned out pretty well) I steered the BS, ITMY, and ETMY back to their previous positions, and was able to lock the Y arm. The "Restore Y Arm" script on the IFO_CONFIGURE screen works. I couldn't test the alignment script, as a dump truck/construction vehicle showed up and started unlocking the MC.

848

Mon Aug 18 17:37:14 2008

I removed the beam block after the PSL periscope and opened the PSL shutter.

There was no MC Refl beam on the camera, so I decided to trust the PSL launch
and aligned the MC to the PSL beam. Here are the old and new values for
the MC angle biases:

 __Epics_Channel_Name______   __OLD_____    ___New___
 C1:SUS-MC1_PIT_COMM          4.490900        3.246900 
 C1:SUS-MC1_YAW_COMM          0.105500	      -0.912500
 C1:SUS-MC2_PIT_COMM          3.809700	      3.658600 
 C1:SUS-MC2_YAW_COMM          -1.837100	      -1.217100
 C1:SUS-MC3_PIT_COMM          -0.614200	      -0.812200
 C1:SUS-MC3_YAW_COMM          -3.696800	      -3.303800

After this, the beam looks a *little low* going into the Faraday Isolator.
Nonetheless, after turning on the IFO input steering PZTs, I was able to
quickly steer the PRM get a beam on the REFL camera and into the REFL OSA.
The PRM optical lever beam is also striking the quad.

I then used the ETMX optical lever as a reference for realigning. After
steering around the input PZTs and ITMX, I saw some flashes in Xarm trans, then got
it locked and ran the alignment script ~5 times. The arm power went
up to 0.9, so I tweaked the MC1 to put the MC refl beam back on MCWFS.
The XARM power then went up to .96. Good enough for now.

Then I started to try and re-align the YARM. Since the oplevs for both ITMY
and the BS are untrustworthy, I first tried to get the beam bouncing off ITMX
and the BS back into the AS OSA, to try and recover some BS alignment. This
didn't work, as the AS OSA may not be a good reference anyways. After
wandering around in the dark for a little while, I decided to try an automated
scan of the alignment space. I used the trianglewave script to scan
the angle biases of BS, ITMY, & ETMY, then looked at the trend of the transmitted
power to find the gps time when there were flashes. I then used
time_machine_conlog to restore the biases to that time. This was close
enough to easily recover the alignment. After several rounds of aligning &
centering oplevs, things look good.

Also locked a PRM. Will work on the DRM tomorrow.

I'm leaving the optics in their "aligned" states over night, so they can
start their "training."

Note: The MC is not staying locked. Needs investigation.

For tomorrow:

lock up the DRM
fix the mode cleaner
re-align mode cleaner to optimize beam through Faraday
re-align all optics again (will be much easier than today)
re-align beam onto all PDs after good alignment of suspended optics is established.

Attachment 1: flatlissa.png

862

Wed Aug 20 13:23:32 2008

I was able to lock the DRMI this afternoon. All the optical levers have been centered.

952

Wed Sep 17 12:55:28 2008

I measured the mode cleaner length last night:


SR620                Marconi
                     199178070
165981524            165981725
                     132785380
                      33196345

I did the division in Marconi-land, rather than SR620-land.
If someone wants to do this in SR620-land, feel free to do it and post the numbers.

953

Wed Sep 17 12:58:12 2008

Locking was pretty unsuccessful last night. All the subparts were locked (ARMs, PRM, DRM) and
aligned, but no DRMI+2ARMs locks. The alignment may have drifted significantly by the time I
got around to working the full shebang, however.

We should get back into the habit of clicking the
yellow "Restore last auto-alignment" button when we finish using the interferometer.

961

Thu Sep 18 01:14:23 2008

Somehow the EPICS system got hosed tonight. We're pretty much dead in the water till we can get it sorted.

The alignment scripts were not working: the SUS_[opt]_[dof]_COMM CA clients were having consistent network failures.
I figured it might be related to the network work going on recently--I tried rebooting the c1susaux (the EPICS VME
processor in 1Y5 which controls all the vertex angle biases and watchdogs). This machine didn't come back after
multiple attempts at keying the crate and pressing the reset button. All the other cards in the crate are displaying
red FAIL lights. The MEDM screens which show channels from this processor are white. It appears that the default
watchdog switch position is OFF, so the suspensions are not receiving any control signals. I've left the damping loops
off for now. I'm not sure what's going on, as there's no way to plug in a monitor and see why the processor is not coming up.

A bit later, the c1psl also stopped communicating with MEDM, so all the screens with PSL controls are also white. I didn't try
rebooting that one, so all the switches are still in their nominal state.

975

Mon Sep 22 12:06:58 2008

Last week I found the ITMY UL OSEM dead. I went around and checked the connections on the various flat ribbon cables
in the suspension control chain; pushing hard on the rack end of the long cable that goes from the sus electronics rack to the
ITMY sat amplifier fixed the problem. It's been fine since then.

NB: A visual inspection of the cable connection would not have revealed a problem. You just can't trust those flat
ribbon connectors with the hook latches.

985

Tue Sep 23 13:25:07 2008

I've been spending time working on the short DOF loops (PRC,MICH,SRC) in an attempt to make the
initial stage of lock acquisition (the DRMI+2ARMs, no spring) better. This seems to have been
largely successful, as last night there were several locks of the DRMI+2ARMs with pretty short
wait times.

The output matrix for the short DOFs is a bit strange, though. The MICH->PRM element is about
3 times too small, which seems to indicate something broken in hardware. The MICH->SRM element
seems normal, though, which suggests the BS is isn't broken--either the PRM has had a sudden
actuation increase or it's a problem with the sensing.

998

Fri Sep 26 16:08:39 2008

There's been good progress in locking the last couple of nights. A lot of time was wasted before I found that
all the SUS{POS,PIT,YAW} damping gains on the SRM were set to 0.1 for some reason, which let it get rung up
just a bit during bang locking. After setting these gains to 0.5 (similar to PRM and BS), the initial lock
acquisition of DRMI+2ARMs (nospring) got much quicker. Then more time was wasted by sticky sliders on the
transmon QPD whitening gain, causing the Schmitt triggered HI/LO gain PD switch not to happen. This meant
that the arm power was not reported properly when the CARM offset was reduced, and so loop gain normalizations
were not working properly. After all this, by the end of the night last night, reduced the CARM offset such
that stored power in the arms was about half of the max. Should be able to get to full power with another
good night, and then back to springy locking.

1005

Mon Sep 29 13:23:40 2008

Summary