ELOG 40m

the laser is recovering slowly

Head temp is still 20.5C and decreasing slowly.
Power output 2.9W
NPRO power 22 mW is increasing as head is cooling down

Attachment 1: laserecoverring.jpg

327

Thu Feb 21 09:56:26 2008

The laser and the psl recovered.
The water chiller temp is 19.98C and head temp 18.4C
Power 3.2W
PMC_T 3.1

c1iovme was restarted and the mc is locking now

Attachment 1: laserisback.jpg

365

Fri Mar 7 19:04:39 2008

Green laser pointer was found in my desk.
I blamed Rana for not returning it to me after a conference talk.
It is surprisingly bright still.
I will bring sweets for Wednesday meeting.

450

Fri Apr 25 15:44:21 2008

scattering measurments

In pursuit of a low back scattering, high power beam dump we looked at materials such:
polished copper, polished aluminum, diamond cut aluminum, variety of polished & heat treated stainless steel and shades of black glasses.
Black glass is ideal at low power. Superpolished SS 304 #8 is the only material that measures close to bg
We are still looking for a conductive low back scattering material that would be ideal for a good high power beam trap.

Black glass-shade 12, ss304 superpolished #8 and white paper-B98-24lbs back scattering were compared at 1064 nm

Atm 1: data plot numbers from front panel of SR830 display,
sensitivity: 1x1 mV for bg and ss
1x1 V for wp

Atm 2: drawing of measurement set up
Atm 3: SR830 lock.amp settings
Atm 4: view from steering mirror
Atm 5: view from black glass trap
Atm 6: white paper

Attachment 1: scatmeas20080425.xls

Attachment 2: scattring_set_up_20080425.ppt

Attachment 3: sr830settings.pdf

Attachment 4: viewfmirror.pdf

Attachment 5: viewfbgtrap.pdf

Attachment 6: wpnmount.pdf

479

Thu May 15 12:05:49 2008

josephb

Path to PSL Position QPD

The 50/50 beamsplitter that was being used as the last turning mirror to the PSL Position QPD has been replaced with a Y1-1037-45-S plate. This turning mirror was also moved 4" farther along the beam path, so as to produce as small (few microwatts) transmission through the plate. The lensing optics were also shifted so as to maintain a focused beam on the photodiode. Lastly, the rotating ND filter was increased from 1.5 to 2.0 to reduce the incident power on the photodiode, since twice the power is now reaching it.

The small beam on transmission will be used by the digital cameras as a test beam.

497

Sun May 25 20:30:25 2008

I checked the PMC mode matching by ramping the gain down to -10 dB (from +20 dB) and
moving the DC offset around until it caught lock on the different HOMs. Then I recorded
the output power (PMCTRANSPD). The DC offset on this EPICS channel was -0.013 V, so I
used its AOFF field to zero this out. Here is a list of the power in the largest modes:

Mode    Power (V)
----    ---------
00        2.7
10        0.2
04        0.04
02        0.02
BE        0.36      **Bull's Eye mode is TEM02 + TEM20. This can be fixed by lens adjustment.

N.B. To make a PNG file with DTT, just make an EPS file -- then use the eps2png perl script.

Attachment 1: pmc.png

502

Wed May 28 14:19:47 2008

atm 1: scattering psl table optics from the top of the output periscope f4, 60s @MOPA 3 W
atm 2: scattering psl table optics from the top of the output periscope f4, 20s
atm 3: competing GigE cameras on the north end of psl table
atm 4: yellow "soft" washer to be replaced on psl output periscope
atm 5: ETMY-ISCT in disarray

Attachment 1: pslscat.png

Attachment 2: pslscat2.png

Attachment 3: 2GigEs.png

Attachment 4: perwash.png

Attachment 5: etmydisarray.png

516

Wed Jun 4 10:18:52 2008

I moved the SS trap over to the psl table.
Texas super # 8 was used from the large shipment.
TXs#8 scattering measured as before, meaning the polishing is good.

Go's squeezing power pick up 350 mW was used.
I made two ~30 degrees wedge traps using 6" x 4" and 12" x 4" SS 0.039" thick
with copper backing of similar size.

There was too much scattering and I could not minimize them all.
It is very helpful to have so much space on the psl table.
It shows more of the weakness of this kind of trap.
I did not dare to turn up the power.

Attachment 1: trap1.png

Attachment 2: trap2.png

524

Fri Jun 6 16:10:51 2008

HEPA filters are running at 100%

The psl HEPA filters were turned up to run at 100% to accommodate beam trap work on Tuesday, June 3, 2008

526

Mon Jun 9 17:32:14 2008

I checked the current PMC transmissivity at a low power.
The input laser power to the PMC was reduced to 75mW by rotating the HWP in front of the PBS.
In this configuration, the output power from the PMC was 50mW. So the transmittance is about 66%.
The reading of C1:PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD is now 0.1 whereas it was 2.7 before turning the power down.

I will check the transmittance at a higher power when I get the cable for the 35W calorie meter, which is missing now.

527

Mon Jun 9 17:57:59 2008

PMC input power backed to the original

I rotated back the HWP before the PBS to restore the input laser power to the PMC.
Now the reading of PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD is 2.7.

528

Tue Jun 10 08:37:18 2008

beam trap is being tested

High power beam trap is being tested just west of FSS area on psl enclosure.

When the pmc is operating at low power that means that the rest of the 3W is going into the
circular SS trap.

Please beware of the high power beam trap test

Attachment 1: trapss3w.png

529

Wed Jun 11 11:45:25 2008

The trap works well at 3 W level. No back reflected beam coming out of the trap on low power
sensing card level. The back scattering was not measured. The trap is insensitive to small pointing variations.
The SS surface did not show any visible degradation after 16 hrs of 3w exposure at elliptical beam size 4x8 mm

It is ready to be placed into the 35 W beam.

Attachment 1: P1020534.png

Attachment 2: P1020533.png

534

Fri Jun 13 11:17:25 2008

PMC transmittance at high power

We received a new cable for the Scientech calorimeter. So I measured the transmittance of the PMC at higher power.

Summary:
Input power = 2.298W
Output power = 1.364W
Transmittance = 59%

Detail:
The input power to the PMC was measured between the two mode matching lenses by the calorimeter.
2.298W looks a bit too low. Actually, the calibrated monitor PD on the MEDM screen shows about 3W output from MOPA.
So we (me and Steve) measured the power right after the PBS after the periscope from MOPA with the HWP set to maximize the transmission of the PBS.
It was 2.77W. According to Steve's previous measurement, the first mirror of the periscope transmits about 200mW of the incoming light to the monitor PD. So the actual output of the MOPA is about 2.97W, which is consistent with the monitor PD reading.
The aperture of the EOM for the PMC control is glowing a lot. We suspect this is the main cause of the loss (from 2.77W to 2.298W).
We may want to re-align the EOM.

The output light from the PMC was picked off by a glass slide. The reflectance of the glass slide was measured first at a lower power (input 98mW, reflected power 1.58mW). Assuming that the reflectance is the same for the higher power, I turned up the input power to the PMC. This time, the picked off power was 22.45mW. This means the actual output power is 98/1.58*22.45=1364mW. The glass slide was kept at the same angle through out the measurement.
The measurement of the output power was done by the Ophir power meter. So calibration difference between the Ophir and the calorimeter may introduce some error.

536

Tue Jun 17 22:00:53 2008

John

HowTo

Problems turning MZ servo on/off

We were unable to toggle the MZ servo on/off (Blank/Normal) from MEDM. Pushing on the Xycom board and cables changed the fault from constant to intermittent. At least one lock loss has been caused by a MZ glitch.

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

540

Wed Jun 18 18:20:10 2008

Investigation on the NPRO temperature stabilization glitches

As Rob pointed out in http://dziban.ligo.caltech.edu:40/40m/537 the MOPA NPRO has been showing some glitchiness in the LTEC loop.
Following Rana's suggestion, Steve and I opened the MOPA and directed a heat gun for a minute to the NPRO hoping that we can see something in the LTEC loop.
The first attachment shows the behavior of LTMP and LTECH along with DTMP and DTECH at the time of the heat gun attack.
T=0 is the time when Steve directed the heat gun to the NPRO. There is no response neither in LTMP nor LTECH.
DTMP and DTECH look like responding.
Around the center, there is a dip in LTMP. This might be caused by removing the heat gun. But we are not sure. This kind of small glitches can be found in LTMP everywhere (see the attachment 2).
It looks like the LTMP sensor is not working, or the LTECH loop is actually working but the LTECH reading is broken.
However, the scan of the slow actuator (temperature) shows the LTECH loop is actually working. So it is a bit confusing.
More investigation is necessary.
See the next entry by me.

Attachment 1: LTEC-loop-HeatGun-Response.pdf

Attachment 2: LTMP-glitches.pdf

541

Wed Jun 18 18:26:19 2008

Finding the optimal operation temperature for the NPRO by the slow act scan

Being suspicious of the temperature stabilization of the NPRO crystal, I ran the slow scan script written by Rana to find the suitable operation temperature.
The procedure is the same as the one explained in the entry below:
http://www.ldas-sw.ligo.caltech.edu/ilog/pub/ilog.cgi?group=40m&task=view&date_to_view=09/04/2006&anchor_to_scroll_to=2006:09:04:22:23:56-rana
The attached plots show the results. By looking at C1:PSL-126MOPA_126MON, I set the slow slider voltage to 0.
This time, it looks like the temperature control of the NPRO crystal is working fine.
Obviously, PMC picks up many higher order modes. I will try to mode match/align the PMC later.

Attachment 1: FSS-slow-scan.pdf

550

Fri Jun 20 17:42:48 2008

SS trap scattering compared to black glass trap

Circular SS304 trap was compared to wedged black glass trap.

The measurement set up of entry 529 was changed to define polarization.
CrystaLaser was remounted in horizontal position and half wave plate was placed after it.
These measurements were done in horizontal polarization.

atm1: the cSSt and wBGt was moved horizontally, ~90 degrees of the incident beam
atm2: traps were rotated around the incident beam, ~20 degrees each direction
atm3: set up
atm4: top view of traps
atm5: side view of trap

Attachment 1: cSSt_1.png

Attachment 2: cSSt_2.png

Attachment 3: scatset_61908.png

Attachment 4: cSSt&wBGt.png

Attachment 5: cSStbeam.png

569

Wed Jun 25 18:03:21 2008

FSS Input Offset slider problem

While working on the PMC scanning, I noticed that the FSS input offset slider is doing nothing.
I traced the signal flow and checked the cables/boards.
The slider changes the output voltage from a VMIVME4116 DAC in the PSL rack. This output voltage is confirmed to be correct at the FLKM64 connector. The signal is connected to the FSS servo interface box (D040423) trough a ribbon cable. However, the output from the interface box is always -27V regardless of the slider position.
Therefore, either the interface box (D040423) or the ribbon cable has a problem.
I will debug the interface box using an extension card when no one is working on the interferometer.

575

Thu Jun 26 18:24:28 2008

FSS input ofset slider problem - fixed

I checked the FSS servo interface board and found that a LT1125CSW used to differentialize offset channel was broken (no virtual short).
So I replaced it. Now the slider is working.
The op-amp was hitting the rail. So it seems like we had been applying the maximum offset to the FSS input all the time.
The reason why the FSS loop still worked with the large offset is that the applied offset (~14V) is attenuated by a factor of 500 at the summing point.

591

Sun Jun 29 11:31:52 2008

I reduced the gain of the ISS (C1: PSL-ISS_VGAGAIN) from 5dB to 2dB. Any higher and it constantly saturates.

595

Sun Jun 29 19:53:26 2008

Quote:

I reduced the gain of the ISS (C1: PSL-ISS_VGAGAIN) from 5dB to 2dB. Any higher and it constantly saturates.

Seemed to go back to normal after the frame builder came back.

597

Sun Jun 29 20:29:48 2008

rana

Correlation of PSL SLOW control v. Room temperature

Attachment 1: slowtemp.png

602

Mon Jun 30 13:48:47 2008

John, Rob

Don't put the bin in front of the air conditioning unit

We spotted that the laser power was dropping.

The air conditioning unit was blocked by the blue bin/trash can/cestino causing the laser head temp to increase by 2 degrees.

Let's be careful about this in the future.

Attachment 1: binremoval.png

603

Mon Jun 30 14:07:26 2008

Rob

Don't put the bin in front of the air conditioning unit

Quote:

We spotted that the laser power was dropping.

the offending configuration:

Attachment 1: DSC_0140.png

604

Mon Jun 30 15:08:52 2008

I adjusted the alignmnet of the Mach-Zehnder's two North mirrors (downstream of the EOMs).

MZ REFL is reduced from 0.54 to 0.43. The largest improvement was due to pitch on the PZT mirror.

Attachment 1: mzalign.png

607

Mon Jun 30 18:36:01 2008

John, Yoichi

We re-adjusted the MZ alignment. The reason behind this is to make sure that the MZ dark port is not falling at a strange fringe, where it is only dark at the dark port PD. It can happen when the two beams poorly overlap.
We tried both the minimization of the MZ dark PD and the maximization of the MZ transmission at the same time.
We also placed another PD in the MZ dark port at a different distance from the original dark PD and tried to minimize this too.
If the MZ dark port is at a strange fringe, one of the dark PD can be dark where the other one is still bright.
If both of the dark PD get dark, the overlap between the beams should be ok.
We tweaked only the two mirrors of the MZ after the EOMs (mainly the one with a PZT).

Right now, the MZ dark power is 0.432.
BTW, we should change the name of the MZ dark port on the medm screen (it is now MZ reflection, where it is not a reflection).
I will try to change it later.

We wanted to put the beam position on the IOO-QPD_POS_* back to the original (before John tweaked the MZ alignment earlier).
However, the trends of IOO-QPD_POS_* show a lot of fluctuation and jumps, of which we don't know the cause. So we could not find reasonable original values.
We suspect a circuit problem in IOO-QPD_POS, especially because the jumps are very strange.
We will do this investigation later too.

609

Tue Jul 1 10:15:22 2008

The laser recovered from a short temp rise. The MZ was aligned and realigned. The suspentions were kicked up accidentally.
Now the computers are down.

Attachment 1: 2d.jpg

611

Tue Jul 1 11:57:24 2008

MZ servo switch problem again

C1:PSL-MZ_BLANK switch (to turn on/off the servo) is not working again. The switch is always off regardless of the epics state.
I pushed the cables into the xycom card, but it did not fix the problem.

612

Tue Jul 1 12:08:38 2008

Joe and I switched cables so that the PMCR screen actually shows reflection not transmission.

The trans camera had a BNC connected to "video out" labelled PMC input PD. The video signal
going to the monitors does not come from "video out", it comes out the "DC in/sync" cable.
As far as we can see this diode doesn't exist. Where should the PMC input PD BNC cable be
connected?

616

Tue Jul 1 16:48:42 2008

rob, john

MZ servo switch problem resolved forever

Quote:

We have fixed this problem forever, by totally disabling this switch. Looking at the schematic for the MZ servo and the datasheet of the AD602, we found that a HI TTL on pin 4 disables the output of the AD602. Since the MZ servo was stuck in the off position, this seemed to indicate that it may be the XYCOM220 itself which is broken, constantly putting out a +5V signal regardless of the EPICS controls. We thought we might be able to get around this by disconnecting this signal at the cross-connect, but ultimately we couldn't find it because there is no wiring diagram for the Mach-Zehnder (!). So, we pulled the board and wired pin 9A of P1 to ground, permanently NORMALizing the MZ_BLANK switch. John has marked up the schematic, and someone should modify the MEDM screen and check the new screen into svn.

We can still the turn the MZ servo on and off by using the test input 1 switch.

Someone also will need to modify the MZ autolocker to use the test input 1 (MZ_SW1) instead of the old MZ_BLANK.

618

Tue Jul 1 21:45:48 2008

John

Mach Zehnder script and screen

I've edited C1: PSL_MACH_ZEHNDER.adl and /cvs/cds/caltech/scripts/PSL/MZ/lockMZ
to reflect the changes described in entry #616.

639

Mon Jul 7 13:49:27 2008

John, Yoichi

This morning John found that MZ servo is not working.
We were able to bring the MZ back by changing the output offset a bit. But we were not sure what was actually wrong.
So we pulled out the MZ board and checked several TPs to understand the behavior.
Here is the summary of what we learned this morning.

The MZ control board has the following stages:

[Mixer] -(error signal)-> [Sum amp for input offset] -(error + offset)-> [Variable Gain Amp] -> [Filter (x100 DC gain)] -(FB signal)-> [High Voltage Amp] -> output
(The HV amp also works as the sum amp for the output offset)

(1) We noticed that the Sum amp for the input offset has an output of -0.14V even when the offset input is 0V. This can be canceled by the input offset slider.
So for the moment, it is fine. But we might want to change the op-amp because the weird offset implies there might be something wrong with the chip.
The procedure to null the -0.14V offset is the following:
a) Enable Test 1 input on the MZ MEDM screen.
b) Move the input offset slider until the mixer monitor becomes 0V. Currently the input offset slider is at -7.5V to cancel the -0.14V offset.

(2) Because the gain of the Variable Gain Amp and the Filter combined is large, the Filter can be easily saturated if the output offset is not right.
This was the cause of the MZ problem this morning. The output offset slider was at a wrong position making the error signal slightly off centered from zero.
This residual DC error signal was amplified by the large gain chain and saturated the filter amp.
Our experience is that the output offset cannot go below -3V. We set it at 0V for now.

642

Mon Jul 7 16:30:08 2008

PSL-PEM 16 days trend

This morning the laser head temp was up to 20.3C because the laser chiller was overflowing.
I removed 700 cc water.

The PSL-FSS_RMTEMP became much more stable during the holidays as the psl enclosure was closed for 4 days

The high particle counts can be explaned by construction activity today.

The PMC & MZ PZT high voltages were out of range this morning.

Attachment 1: pempsl16d.jpg

645

Tue Jul 8 08:16:56 2008

The PMC is unhappy. PMC auto locker is not working.
DC output slider adjust has to be moved from rail to rail before it locks.

MZ is working great.

Attachment 1: pmc.jpg

648

Tue Jul 8 12:25:54 2008

Tue Jul 8 21:46:38 2008

GC650M moved to the PMC transmission

I moved a GC650M, which was monitoring the light coming out of the PSL, to the transmission port of the PMC to see the transmitted mode shape.
It will stay there unless someone find other use of it.

Just FYI, you can see the picture from the control computers by the following procedure:

ssh -X mafalda
cd /cvs/cds/caltech/target/Prosilica/40mCode
./SampleViewer

Chose 02-2210A-06223 and click on the Live View icon.

659

Fri Jul 11 09:29:02 2008

the PMC still hangs up

Morning alarms:

PMC high voltage is railing, it's auto locker is frosen
I have to move DC Output Adjust slider by hand and it locks immediately

PSL_ISS is saturating. Saturation goes away when PMC is locked.

Laser chiller water is overflowing again: removed 450 cc water

Attachment 1: pmc4d.jpg

662

Sat Jul 12 23:28:31 2008

As everyone has noticed recently, the PMC seems to have a PZT problem. It often zooms
of to one of its rails after locking as if the PZT range has decreased dramatically.

WE should check this on Monday by disabling the FSS and applying a slow triangle wave to
the NPRO frequency. The PMC will track this frequency change and this will allow us to
diagnose its problems.

If it has real problems, I have a spare in W. Bridge which we can swap in temporarily.

The attached plot shows 3 years of trend; looks like it went bad in summer of last year.

This also seems to be the cause of our ISS saturation problems: lowering the gain of the PMC
even slightly increased the intensity noise enough to cause saturation. Increasing the gain
even slightly increased the intensity noise enough to cause saturation due to PMC servo oscillation.

Attachment 1: Untitled.png

663

Sun Jul 13 17:19:29 2008

rana

Summary

MOPA SLOWM Calibration

John, Rana

We first unlocked the FSS and ramped the SLOW actuator. With the PMC locked we observed the PMC PZT voltage
as a function of SLOWM (SLOW loop actuator voltage). We believed this to be ~1-5 GHz / V. Since this is
not so precise we then ran a slow (2 min. period) triangle wave into the slow actuator and looked at the
ref cav transmission peaks to calibrate it.

Plot is attached>

We assume that the reference cavity length = 203.2 mm then the FSR = 737.7 MHz. So looking at the plot
and using our eye to measure the SLOWM calibration is 1054 +/- 30 MHz/V. This is probably dominated by
our eye method.

Note: we tried to get the length from T010159-00-R (Michele, Weinstein, Dugolini). In that doc,
the length used is 203.3 mm whereas its 203.2 mm in the PSL FDD (?). The calculation of the FSR is also
incorrect (looks like they used c = 299460900 instead of 299792458 m/s). We took the length from the PSL FDD
(T990025-00-D) but not the FSR, since they also did not find the right value of 'c'. I guess that the speed
of light just ain't what it used to be.

Attachment 1: SLOWDCcalibration.png

665

Mon Jul 14 00:36:19 2008

John

Summary

Slow sweep of laser temp - PMC PZT response

John, Rana

Follow up to # 663

Top trace: C1: PSL-PMC_PZT
Middle: C1: PSL-FSS_SLOWDC
Bottom: C1: PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD

The only calibration I could find for the PMC PZT (LLO e-log Sep 3 2003 - 23 MHz/V) predicts 31V for an FSR. I did a rough calibration and got our FSR to be around 210 V. I assumed 713 MHz for an FSR and applied this calibration (~3.4 MHz/ V) to the PZT data.

In terms of volts per metre our PZT gives 2.54 nm/ V whereas the LLO PZT is 17.16 nm/ V.

Attachment 1: SlowTsweep.png

672

Tue Jul 15 10:24:57 2008

PMC temp & pzt voltage

The PMC pzt HV was happy with no HEPA temp stability.
Can we thermally insulate the pmc ?

Attachment 1: pmctemp.jpg

684

Wed Jul 16 17:36:51 2008

I changed the nominal FSS input offset to 0 from 0.3. Tolerance remains unchanged at +/-0.05.

688

Thu Jul 17 08:30:15 2008

PMC relocked manually

The PMC pzt HV and the servo gain adj. are railing at max this morning

Why is it on the decreasing side of FSS_RTTEMP slope?

Attachment 1: pmc4d.jpg

689

Thu Jul 17 12:15:21 2008

Eric

Swept PMC PZT voltage range

I unlocked the PMC and swept over C1:PSL-PMC_RAMP's full range a couple of times this morning.  The PMC should now be relocked and returned 
to normal.

692

Thu Jul 17 20:13:34 2008

PMC alignment/mode matching effort

I'm working to improve the mode matching of PMC.
Because I noticed that the beam was hitting the aperture of the EOM for PMC, I moved the EOM a little bit to maximize the transmission.
This did not change the alignment to the reference cavity but changed the alignment of the PMC a lot.
So I adjusted it back.
The alignment of the PMC can be easily optimized but the Hermite 02 mode still remains. This means the mode matching is bad.
Moving the lenses by a small amount (a few mm) did not change the height of 02 mode.
I'm planning to move the lenses by a large amount tomorrow. But it will destroy the alignment to the PMC.
So I installed two irises in the beam path after the lenses to remember the alignment roughly.
Right now the PMC transmission is slightly worse than before because the lens positions are not good.

699

Fri Jul 18 19:41:09 2008

PMC PZT investigation

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.

Attachment 1: Hysteresis.png

Attachment 2: StepResponse.png

701

Fri Jul 18 23:24:24 2008

rob

PMC PZT investigation

Quote:

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

rob