Our existing 300 series SS plungers from McMastercar #8476A43 are silver plated as Atm2 shows.

Problems:  1, they become magnetized after years being close to the magnets

                     2, they oxidize by time so it is hard to turn them

I looked around to replace them.

Titanium body, nose and beryllium copper spring. None magnetic for UHV enviorment.

Can be made in 7 weeks at an UNREASONABLE $169.00 ea at quantity of 50

I found that the slow machine c1auxey, which controls and monitoring the ETMY suspension things, were not responding.

The machine responded to ping but I wasn't able to telnet to it.

I went down there and power-cycled it by keying the power of the VME rack, and then it came back and seems working properly.

I have no idea why it ran into such condition.

[Rana / Mirko / Kiwamu]

 The watchdogs on the MC suspensions are not working.

Switching off the watchdogs doesn't stop feeding signals to the suspensions.

For tonight, we will leave the controller of the MC suspensions switched off so that the computer won't smash the optics accidentally.

We are now trying to understand why the coherence between SUS-X_SUSPOS_IN1 and SUS-X_SUSPOS_OUT is lost below 1 Hz for X = MC1, MC2, MC3, BS, ITMX, ITMY, ETMX, ETMY, SRM. It is OKEY only for PRM but the different filteres are used there. For PRM - 30:0.0 and Bounce Roll, for all others - 30:0.0 and Cheby. The transfer functions between these two signals plotted in foton and fft tools are also not the same.

If we switch off all the filters between these 2 signals, than the coherence is one. If one of the filters is switched on, everything is also fine. But if there are several present, than they filter the signal in unexpected way.

Moreover it seems that the coherence is dependent on the input signal. The coherence is better with local dumping than without.

 We have done the following on the c1sus and c1lsc computers : provided excitation, let the signal pass through filters 30:0.0 and Cheby and plotted the coherence between in and out signals.

c1sus computer - coherence is corrupted

c1lsc computer - coherence is not corrupted

It seems as if someone was looking into this on Wednesday, but as there's no elog, I think probably not.

Tonight we noticed that, in fact, the watchdogs don't work for any of the corner optics (I confirmed that they do work for the ETMs).

Whether the switch for the coil drivers is enabled or disabled, the voltage monitor on the coil drivers responds to the digital signals.

I tried restarting the c1susaux process, hitting reset on the crate, and also keying the crate. The +5V light on the front of the crate is flickering somewhat, but I'm not sure if this is new or not since the power outage. The next step is to track the Xycom signal from the card over to the coil driver to find where the signal is failing to happen.

Since its not working for any of the corner optics, I suspect the crate and not the cards. If that's the issue this will be a painful fix. We are sort of assuming that this is due to the power outage, but in fact, I cannot tell when the last time was that someone rigorously verified the working of these switches. [

I][B]We had better get ready for upgrading our SLOW controls, Jamie.[/B][/I]

[Rana, Mirko]

I tried out the virtual pendulum idea today. The idea is to compensate the physical pendulum via the control system, and then add a virtual pendulum formed in the control system. We know the actuator TF from p. 5900 and apply its inverse to the C1:SUS-MC?_SUSPOS filters. Also we add an pendulum Q=3 with a resonance frequency of 0.1Hz to the POS control loops.

The result is pretty awesome!

1. Black: Standard config. Wfs on. New Cheby filter in place ( p. 6031 )
2. Red: With virtual pendulum. Extra eliptic LP filter @ 2.5Hz

Filter shape:

This is stable for 5-10minutes, at which point it falls out of lock, swinging in yaw.

Our approach to making the F2A or F2P filters for the MC is to use the measured resonant frequencies and then calculating the appropriate mechanical dimensions of each suspension. This is basically because we don't have optical levers with normal incidence on these optics, but the method should be fine.

To find the formulas, I asked Gaby for her old cheat sheet: Its now in the DCC. Its only for Large optics, but you should be able to reconstruct the right ones for SOS by just changing the parameters.

In the above entry MC_f  signal is improved off of resonance by the implementation of the pendulum compensation. It should be checked if this is actually due to the implementation of the virtual pendulum at 0.1Hz. A way to check that might be to implement a simple double LP at 0.1Hz instead and look at the resulting MC_f signal. A projection of the OSEM FB noises with the compensation active might be interesting.
The physical resonance at 1Hz is clearly not compensated correctly, which is probably the reason for the lock losses after a few minutes. It might be a good start to measure the residual resonance with the compensation in place. The filters in bank 7 of C1:SUS-MC?_SUSPOS have both the compensation of the 1Hz resonance( really the inverse actuator TF ) and the virtual pendulum in them. The ‘pure’ compensation can be found in the InvTF module in the C1:OAF-ADAPT_MCL_CORR filter.
The fact that the beam swings in yaw at lock loss indicates that the separation of the DOFs might not be perfect. One should have a look into the yaw and pitch DOFs with the compensation active.

The watchdogs' issue has been solved and they are now working fine.

It was just because one of the Sorensens had been off.

[Koji Kiwamu]

We wonder if the flakiness of MC2 comes from the suspension or not.

To test it, we are shaking all of the suspension biases +/-1.0 with a script.

The script is here:
/users/koji/111216/SUS_hysteresis.sh

For this test, we closed the mechanical shutter before the MC.

Also some amount of misalignment is anticipated.
Don't be surprised if you see nothing is working when you come to the lab in the weekend.

The hysteresis test has been aborted.

All of the suspensions have accumulated unexpectedly big DC biases of about 5 from their nominal points.

Do you guys have timestamps for when you started/ended the test? I have been trying to take some long-term RAM data but keep getting foiled by stuff (this test, RTS upgrade, switching of RAMmon channels, etc.)

The test was from: 2011-12-17 09:48 to 11:49 (UTC).
This corresponds to the period from 2011-12-17 01:48 to 3:49 (PST).

ZK: Thanks

Koji has modified the script for the hysteresis measurement.

A new test started from 16:05 PT, Dec 18th and takes a couple of hours to finish the measurement.

Do not touch the suspensions until further notice.

The measurement finished at ~ 21:50 PT.

I have recentered the oplev beams, including BS, ITMs and ETMs.

Another hysteresis test has begun at 1:50 PT, Dec/19.

It will finish after 3 or 4 hours. During the measurement the PSL mechanical shutter will be kept closed.

While discussing the suspension hysteresis measurements, Koji, Kiwamu, and I realized that the suspension wire standoff is aluminum, whereas the standoff for the LIGO LOS are using quartz.

Using a soft aluminum standoff is bad. The movement of the suspension will slowly wear the groove and produce opportunities for mechanical upconversion and hysteresis.

In fact, the wire standoff as well as the clamping block on the top should be made of sapphire or ruby to prevent any such wearing issues. Steve is hot on the case.

ETMX sus damping restored

No we can't do that because the c1scx model is not working properly.

If you look into the real time controller screen you will find what I mean.

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 11:37 PM, Rana Adhikari wrote:
Steve,

We are thinking of replacing a few metal parts in the suspension with sapphire/ruby. We want to replace the standoff (which is Al) with sapphire and also the top plate where the wire is clamped.

For the top, we should make a cutout for a little plate in the existing crossbar. In the cutout would go a little mounting plate. Then the clamping plate (which is now steel) we would also replace with a Sapphire one.

I don't think it matters whether its sapphire or ruby, just has to be very hard.

Can you please get some quotes on the parts?

rana

c1iscex is working as before and the optic is damped.

What I checked

1. I went to the X-end rack. I found the io-chassis was turned off.

2. I shutdown c1iscex, turned off, and turned on everything. Again, we did not have any signal from the ADC into c1scx model.

However, I found that c1x01 indicates healthy ADC signals.
This means that the connection between the IOP and the c1scx model was wrong ==> Simulated Plant

3. Burtrestored X'mas eve snapshot. This restored the gains and matrices as well as C1:SCX-SIM_SWITCH
which switches the input between the real ADCs and simulated plant.

4. The signals came back to c1scx.

 In order to get a better price from Vlier's Tom Chen I changed Ti body back to SS304L-siver plated and music wire spring. The price is still ~$120 ea. at quantity 50

I will talk to Mike G about modifying the  McMaster plunger with a hex nut.

Sitting down to start cavity measurements, I found both ITMs tripped.  It must have happened a while ago (I didn't bother to check dataviewer trends) because both had rms levels of <5 counts, so they've had a while to sit and quiet down.

[Rana / Kiwamu]

We tried to set some parameters for the suspension drift monitor but the old matlab script, which automatically sets the values, didn't run because it uses the old mDV protocol.

The attached link below is a description about the script.

https://wiki-40m.ligo.caltech.edu/Computers_and_Scripts/All_Scripts#Drift

It needs to be fixed or upgraded by pynds.

Fri Feb 03 19:57:20 2012

Fri Feb 03 20:25:19 2012 :   Aligned all SUS to center their OL beams

Fri Feb 03 20:29:21 2012:    Aligned all SUS to make OL_PIT = 0.5

The attached trend shows a problem with the QPD sums.

Why are ETMX and ITMX so much lower than ETMY and ITMY? Are the laser's dying? Or is it the gain inside the QPD? Or the reflectivity of the coatings?

Steve - please check on Monday the laser powers and the ETM/ITM reflectivity for HeNe lasers. Maybe we have to increase the transimpedance gain in the heads.

I took one of the spare OSEM satellite amps (schematic) from the cabinet down the Y arm this afternoon to begin testing. I spent most of the day amassing the melange of adapters and connectors I needed to talk to the relic. The most elusive was the über-rare 64-pin IDE connector, for which neither the 40m nor Downs or Bridge had a breakout (despite there being several Phoenix boxes on each electronics rack at the 40m---hmm...). The solution I came up with was to make a breakout cable myself, only there was no 64-pin ribbon. So, I carefully fed a 50-pin and most of a 16-pin ribbon side by side into one push-down connector, and that was that:

I also finally found a 25-pin D-sub breakout just after figuring out the proper pinout for a 25-to-9 adapter, which I thought I was going to have to use. OH WELL.

Science

The first thing I figured I'd do is measure the LED drivers' current noise and see how it compared with LISO. I powered the box up and found that the TO-3 7815 regulator was putting out +20V---bad. I assumed it was broken, so I got another one from Downs and replaced it. Powered it up again and the output was still at +20V (WTF?). My suspicion is that one of the shielding capacitors has failed in some bizarre way, but I didn't have time to check this before I was beckoned to another task. This is where I'll start again next.

Another thing Frank and I noticed as we were figuring out how the driver worked was that the current-specifying resistor of one of the driver stages had not been properly modified along with the others, so it was forcing the feedback loop to rail. This mod was done precariously by adding two perpendicular sandwiched "Radd" resistors on top of the main one, so it's also possible that the ones for this stage had just been knocked off somehow (perhaps by the massive gender-switching ribbon chain hanging down on it). Steve and I noticed that there was a label on the box complaining that some part of the amp for one of the OSEMs wasn't working, but we peeled it off and threw it away because he figured it was outdated.

Anyway, in short, the plan going forward is as follows:

• For this box
  • Measure the LED driver and PD transZ amp noises with dummy components
    
  • Compare with LISO to make sure they make sense
  • Measure the noise again with an OSEM connected
  • Based on the above and more LISO modeling, decide if it's a good idea to replace the LT1125's with OP497's
  • Increase the dynamic range by allowing +/-10V output, rather than +/-2V as was needed for old ADCs
• After
  • Systematically mirror the changes in all other boxes by switching one out at a time

Comments welcome.

ETMX and ETMY have 0.2 mW returning to their QPDs........so the gain must lower at  ETMX

ITMX laser 1103P has only 0.67 mW output and 0.025 mW returning to the QPD.

ITMX and ETMX oplev lanching paths  have lenses without AR coating. This is my fault. I will buy them.

          ETMX   0.2 mW           900 counts

         ITMX     0.025           1300

         SRM      0.04            2600

          BS      0.05            3500

          PRM     0.06            4000

         ETMY     0.2             9000

        ITMY      0.3            14500

Kiwamu showed me how to do transferfunction of oplev pitch

I did some more investigation on the OSEM box today.

Troubleshooting:

After removing some capacitors and still finding that the +15V rail was at over +20V, I decided to see if the TO-3 7815 that I removed behaved properly all by itself. It did. After some more poking around, I discovered that whoever assembled the board isolated the case of the regulator from the board. It is through the case that this package gets its grounding, so I removed the mica insulator, remounted the regulator, and all worked fine.

Since I had gotten a spare from Downs, I also replaced the LT1031 (precision 10-V reference), for fear that it had been damaged by the floating voltage regulator.

Noise measurements:

LED Driver

With the above out of the way, I was finally able to take some measurements. The first thing I did was to look at the LED drivers. I fixed the one stage that I mentioned in my last post by adding two 820-ohm resistors in parallel with the 1k, such that it was very close to all the others (which are 806 || 806 || 1k). With that, using a red LED, I measured a current of 34.5 mA (+/- 0.1) out of each of the 5 stages (UL, UR, LL, LR, S).

I then measured the current noise of each one by monitoring the voltage across the 287-ohm resistor in series with the LED. The driver works by putting the LED in the feedback path of an inverting amp. There is a 10-V input from the LT1031, and the values of the input and feedback resistors determine the current drawn through the LED. There is a buffer (LM6321) in the path to provide the necessary current.

The LISO model I made according to that description seems to make sense. I simply modeled the LED as a small resistor and asked LISO for the current through it. The transfer function shows the proper DC response of -49.15 dB(A/V) -->  34.8 mA @ 10 V, but, the estimated current noise doesn't add up with the measured levels:

I have to get to the bottom of this. Two possibilities are: 1) The buffer adds noise, and/or 2) I am modeling this invalidly.

PD Amp

I also began measuring the PD amplifier noise levels, though I only measured two of them for lack of time. I find it odd that there is a 100-ohm input series resistor on what I thought would be just a transimpedance amplifier. For that reason, I want to look into how the OSEMs are connected to this guy.

In any case, I measured the output noise of two of the PD amps by shorting the input side of the 100-ohm resistors to ground, and then I divided by their TF to get the input noise level. Here it is compared with the LISO estimate. I have plotted them in units of voltage noise at the input side of the resistors for lack of a way to infer the equivalent photocurrent noise level.

Above 2 Hz or so, the measured level agrees with the prediction. Below this, the measured noise level increases as 1/f, while it should go as the standard 1/sqrt(f) (the manufacturer-quoted 1/f corner is at 2 Hz). Another thing to get to the bottom of.

SUS- BS, ITMX, ITMY, PRM, SRM, ETMX & ETMY_OLPIT transfer funtion with sine wave excitation 0.1 amplitude:

I'm driving C1:SUS-ITMX_OLYAW and PIT_EXC with amplitude 0,1-0.3 while taking transfer funtions of oplev.

The transfer functions are normal. However I noticed that the LL osem is not responding to this excitations

Healthy sensor respons should be like Atm3

Frank pointed out to me that I had dumbly forgotten to include the voltage reference's noise. The LT1031 has an output noise level of ~125 nV/rHz above 10 Hz or so, and this at least makes the estimate much closer. I had also not included an extra LT1125 stage between the reference and the other stages. I guess I was tired.

The estimate is now within a factor of a few of the measured level, and it has roughly the right shape. Around 1 Hz, it looks like the measured data begin to roll up away from the model, though it's tough to say due to the effect of the AC coupling on the analyzer less than a decade below. If there is indeed extra noise here, Frank thinks it could be due to resistor current noise.

I'll switch one or two out for nicer ones and see if things change.

OL_YAW transfer functions are here.

 I had two PHDs helping me to overlap the EXML files in DTT. We failed. This job requires professorial help.

These observations of the OSEMs  were taken while taking transfer functions of oplev YAW at excitation amplitude 0.1

 Atm1,  C1:SUS-ETMX_SENSOR_SIDE cross coupling

Atm2,   C1:SUS-ITMX_SENSOR_LL   not excitable

Atm3-4,   BS and PRM  insensitive

Good OSEM list: ITMY, ETMY and SRM

I worked on the OSEM box a little more today, with the hopes of reducing the measured output current noise. I succeeded, at least modestly. It turns out that most of the noise was indeed caused by the crappy resistors.

Below is the circuit for one of the 5 LEDs. The output of the op-amp structure directly after the LT1031 reference is split between 5 stages identical to the structure on the right. I have shown just one (UR) for clarity. The various measurement points are explained below.

I started from the beginning of the circuit, directly after the LT1031, to make sure that the excess noise seen the other day wasn't just from a noisy reference. Below is the measured output voltage noise along with the LISO estimate. Clearly, the LT1031 is performing to spec (as it should, since it's a new part that I just put in). Note that the apparent better-than-spec performance at low frequencies is just from the AC coupling, which I needed due to the high DC level.

Since the reference was in order, the next step was to switch out some of the crappy old resistors for nicer thin-film ones. In case anyone is interested, Frank has done some detailed investigation of excess 1/f current noise in resistors. I measured the voltage noise level at the point labeled "inter-stage measurement" above, first without any modifications and then after swapping the old 10k resistors (R1 & R2) out for nice Vishay thin-film ones. There is clearly a big improvement, and the modified circuit essentially agrees with LISO now down to 1 Hz. Below this, it looks like there could still be an issue.

I wanted to see what the improvement was in the overall output current noise of the system, so I went about measuring the current noise as I had the other day (by measuring the voltage noise across R55 and dividing by the resistance). The performance was already better than the old measurement, but not at the LISO level. So, I replaced the current-setting resistors (R54 & R55)---which were actually 3 parallel resistors on a single pad in each case---by nice Vishay ones, as well. I didn't have any that were close to the original resistance of ~287 ohms, so I put three 1k ones in parallel. This of course shifts the resistance up to 333 ohms, but that only causes a ~16% change in current. I was sure to convert voltage noise into current noise with this new resistance, though.

With this change, the total output current noise is now very close to the LISO estimate as well down to ~1 Hz.

Some notes:

• First, I apologize for the noise margin at higher frequencies. I redid the higher frequency measurements with an SR560 as a preamp, but I must have screwed up the calibration because the data don't match up quite right with the LF measurements. It was clear while I was taking them that they followed the LISO trace.
• There still seems some excess noise below 1 Hz. It could be that the noisy resistors in the parallel stages were somehow still contaminating the cleaned-up channel. I'll look into this more soon.

Finally I found a company who can do Koji's improved  -hard to make-  specification on ruby or sapphire wire standoff.

NOT POLISHED excimer laser cut, wire groove radius R 0.0005" + - 0.0002"

$250 ea at 50 pieces of order

ITMX, PRM and BS watchdogs are tripped. They were restored.

Stable MC was disabled so I can use MC_REFL 1 W beam to measure green glass .

While Kiwamu and I were trying to investigate the the vertex glitches we were noticing excess noise in ITMX, which Kiwamu blamed on some sort of bad diagonalization.  Sure enough, the ITMX input matrix is in the default state [0], not a properly diagonalized state.  Looking through the rest of the suspensions, I found PRM also in the default state, not diagonalized.

We should do another round of suspension diagonalization.

Kiwamu (or whoever is here last tonight): please run the free-swing/kick script (/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/SUS/freeswing) before you leave, and I'll check the matrices and update the suspensions tomorrow morning.

[0]

This reminds me that the whole Dr. SUS situation never got taken care of. Where I left off, I was having issues pulling 40m data with NDS2 (which is what all the diagonalization scripts use).

What is the deal with 40m+NDS2? If it is till no-go, can we have a consensus on whether this is too important to wait for? If so, I will rewrite the scripts to use NDS and we can upgrade to NDS2 once we can prove we know how to use it.

 Oplev transfer functions PIT UGF were optimized to be at 2-3 Hz with 60 degree minimum phase margin by adjuting oplev gains.

Additional Notes by KI:

• The PRM oplev has a tailored 3.3 Hz resonant gain in order to calm down a wobble during the lock acquisitions.
• Also in the PRM oplev a 35 Hz elliptic cut-off filter wasn't  activated at the time when Steve measured it.
• In both ITMs, elliptic cut-off filters seem to have higher corner frequencies compered with the others.
  
  • I guess these settings are from the old days.
• ETMs and ITMs have whitening filters while the rest of the suspensions don't.
  • Without the whitening filters, normally the signals above 30 Hz are covered by some electrical noises or perhaps He-Ne laser intensity noise (#5630).
    • This is why we usually use the 35 Hz elliptic filters to roll off the control noises.
  • Since the ETMs and ITMs have whitening filters they potentially can have slightly higher corner frequencies in the elliptic filters.
    • Of course the corner frequencies need to be re-designed in terms of the amount of noise injection to the longitudinal motion.
      

 All suspentions were restored and MC locked. PRM side osem  RMS motion was high.

Atm2, Why the PRM is 2x as noisy as the SRM ?

Somehow the angular stability of the central part have not been so great.

Also the angular motions look fluctuating a lot and they seem to be related with the glitches.

I took the oplev spectra when the PRMI is locked and unlocked to see whether if something obviously crazy is going on or not.

They seem ok to me except that the PRM pitch shows an extra bump at around 2-3 Hz when the PRMI is locked. But I don't think it's prominent.

- The attached files show the oplev spectra. When the PRMI is locked the PRM and both ITMs are under the length control.

(red) pitch when PRMI is locked

(blue) yaw when PRMI is locked

(orange) pitch without any length controls

(cyan) pitch without any length controls

 The BS and the PRM have 3.3 Hz resonant gain filters that kill the phase margins.

 Green welding glass 7" x 9"   shade #14 with 40 mm hole and mounting fixtures are ready to reduce scatter light on SOS

PEEK 450CA shims and U-shaped clips  will keep these plates damped.

[Suresh, Jamie]

Suresh and I opened up and checked out the eLIGO tip-tilts assemblies we received from LLO. There are two, TT1 and TT2, which were used for aligning AS beam into the OMC on HAM6. The mirror assemblies hang from steel wires suspended from little, damped, vertical blade springs. The magnets are press fit into the edge of the mirror assemblies. The pointy flags magnetically attach to the magnets. BOSEMS are attached to the frame. The DCC numbers on the parts seem to all be entirely lies, but this document seems to be close to what we have, sans the vertical blade springs: T0900566

We noticed a couple of issues related to the magnets and flags. One of the magnets on each mirror assembly is chipped (see attached photos). Some of the magnets are also a bit loose in their press fits in the mirror assemblies. Some of the flags don't seat very well on the magnets. Some of the flag bases are made of some sort of crappy steel that has rusted (also see pictures). Overall some flags/magnets are too wobbly and mechanically unsound. I wouldn't want to use them without overhauling the magnets and flags on the mirror assemblies.

There are what appear to be DCC/SN numbers etched on some of the parts.  They seem to correspond to what's in the document above, but they appear to be lies since I can't find any DCC documents that correspond to these numbers:

TT1: D070176-00 SN001
  mirror assembly: D070183-00 SN003
TT2: D070176-00 SN002
  mirror assembly: D070183-00 SN006

 I don't know what tripped the PRM watchdog, but it was unhappy.  I manually moved the sliders on the IFO align screen away from the positions of the save file before turning on the damping, to make sure that I wouldn't be sending oodles of power to the REFL port, since the ND filter is still removed.  So PRM is damped now, but misaligned.