There was more jackhammering this morning just about 20 ft north-west of the beamsplitter chamber, outside.

 This seal is good for daily use- operation only. The IFO has to be sealed  with light metal doors every night so ants and other bugs can not find their way in.

Our janitor Kevin is mopping the hole IFO room floor area with 5%  ant killing solution in water in order to discourage bugs getting close to our openings of the vented chamber.

You may be sensitive to this chemical too.  Do not open chamber till after lunch.

Old control room air condition failed yesterday around noon. It was blowing 80-85F hot air for about 2-3 hours at racks 1Y4-7 and the entry room 103

 The same thing happening again.  The intermittent offset upstream of the seismometer that never got fixed.

The granite plate and ball bearings are in. I will place seismometers on it.

Safety glasses 1064 nm transmission measured at ~200 mW level. They are all good.

 Teflon feet removed and heavy brass-delrin pd base installed. Ref-cavity reflected light remains to be beautiful doughnut shape on camera.

Large earthquake shakes Baja California, Mexico and 6 over Magnitude 5 aftershakes follow.  The frontend computers are still down since Friday.

 The cabling on the seismic stack was rerouted so it could reach the south edge of the table: the cables  were removed from the viton padded clamps and repositioned this morning.

ITM-south tower's earthquake screw viton tips could be a little bit larger. They do not stay in their screw hole after a hard clamping action.

4-40 earthquake screws under the test mass:viton tips can fall out without action, the treads are cross threaded so the screws are wobbling

 I restored damping to all SUSes except ITM-east. The ITMX OSEMs are being used in the clean assembly room.

In order to minimize the diffusion of more dust particles into the vented IFO vacuum envelope

BEFORE opening chamber:

-Have a  known plan,

-Heavy 1" thick door requires 3 persons- of  one experienced and one certified crane operator and steel tow safety shoes

-Block IFO beams, be ware of experimental set up of other hazards: 1064,  visible or new-special installation

- Look at the particle counter, do not open above 6,000 particles of 0.5 micron. Construction activities are winding down. See  plot of 35 days since we  vented.

-Have clean door stand for heavy door, covered with merostate at the right location and dry-clean screws for light covers,

-Prepare lint free wipers for o-rings,(no solvent on o-ring!) Kimwipes for outside of chamber and metal covers, methanol and powder free gloves

-Wipe with wet Kimwipe-tissue of methanol around the door, chamber of interest and o-ring cover ring

-Cut door covering merostate and tape it into position,..if in place...check  folded-merostate position, if dusty... replace it

-Is your cleanroom garment clean?.......if in doubt ....replace it

-Keep surrounding area free and clean

-Make sure that HEPAs are running: PSL-enclosure, two mobile units and south end flow banch

-Check the tools: are they really clean? wipe it with wet Kimwipe, do you see anything on the Kimwipe?

-You are responsible to close chamber ASAP with light door or doors as you finished for the day.

Merostate cover down is appropriate during daily brakes.

The 1979 vintage RF spectrum analyzer HP4195A  sn2904J01587 shipped out  for repair today to http://www.avalontest.com

It has a 25 MHZ oscillation when you go  below 150 MHZ in your sweep....atm1 with the larger amplitude shows this 25 MHZ

Atm2 is displaying  full sweep-sign scans from 1 to 500 MHZ.....here one can clearly see the three segment of the scan:

1, large amplitude 25 MHZ oscillation dominating the spectrum up to 150 MHZ

2, the mid section from 150 MHZ  to 300 MHZ with medium size amplitude is normal

3, from 300 MHZ to 500 MHZ the amplitude is decreasing.......showing the disadvantage of using a 300 MHZ oscilloscope

We found ref-cavity HV was off yesterday afternoon. It was turned back on.

ETMY sus damping was restored

The 40m's new undergrad Kevin Kuns was introduced to 40m safety hazards. He is new and needs guidance as specially with 2W laser work.

Peter King will train him on Friday to LIGO-laser standard.

Koji and I wanted to turn off the IFO-room AC so the wind would not blow on MC1-3. We could not. The switches were probably bypassed when the power transformer was replaced at the last scheduled power outage.

 There is one three position manual/off/auto switch next to the filter for each unit at CES. They have to be in AUTO position when we want to turn AC on/off from the lab.

 Now I know why Rana was wearing his bright green pants yesterday. It is nice to see the green beam in the 40m IFO again. It calls for celebration!

I stopped AWG 1Hz drive of ITMYs (south-arm) I still see unblocked beams at the ETMYs table. We have plenty of cleaned razor beam traps to be used. Please block Faraday rejects etc

I stopped AWG  1 Hz drive to ITMYs. ITMXe was also driven or oscillating. ITMXe damping was off, so I turned it on. It did not effect it's oscillation

ETMY-south sus damping was restored

As we learned yesterday, the PSL laser power out put mechanical shutter is not working in the remote mode. It only works in local manual mode.

Do not rely on the MEDM screen monitor readout! The position is only changing on the monitor. The main beam must be blocked before the output periscope.

Ben found the Sorenson 5V ps off. It was turned off since our last scheduled power outage. I wonder what else is running on 5V in the PSL? This power supply should be on the

"alarm handler"  list to avoid future repeat of this condition. However a real safety switch would have confirming position sensors of the shutter open or closed. Is there such thing at the sites?

 The foreline pressure of TP3 is 2.9 mTorr  The drypump is loosing it's bearing and it is very noisy.

V3, V5 closed and TP3 small turbo controller off. This turned off the noisy forepump that has to be replaced.

RGA is running at cc4 2e-6 Torr

The RGA was turned off at cc4 1e-5 Torr

Bob replaced the tipseal in an other drypump and I swapped it in. TP3 turbo is running again, it's foreline pressure is 40 mTorr. The RGA is still off

IFO room temp 27.5C , Please remember to turn AC back on !

 The tiles were cut out in 1.5" ID circle to insure that the 7/16" OD lead balls would not touch the tiles on Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Granite surface plate specifications: grade B, 18" x 24" x 3" , 139 lbs

These balls and granite plate were removed by  Rana in entry log #3018 at 5-31-2010

This box was made  to provide good thermal stability for seismometer calibration. There is an inner solid shell of 0.064" Al box that is covered by 2" insulation

inside and outside. The polystyrene foam is "CertiFoam 25 SE " from McMasterCarr #9255K3.

Is the cooling line clogged? The chiller temp is 21C See 1 and 20 days plots

Steve for Nancy,

Seismometer interface box ac power was turned off, Guralps disconnected and moved. Ranger locked, moved and released. Nancy will describe the rest soon.

The flattened lead balls were checked for their heights by the calliper, and were all in the range of 9.50 to 9.70 mm.

The rechecking was done by using these balls between two aluminium plates and checking their levelling. When confirmed this, we proceeded to install the balls(no more balls :P ) in their place.

The Guralps were switched off by switching off the power supply to them. The ranger mass was clamped in order to be able to move it. This can be undone by rotating the transport screw counter-clockwise.

We installed the flattened lead ballsin the space made for them. The granite was then placed on it with the help of many other people in the lab.  It was lowered by hanging it on two straps held by people , and then placed in the space marked for it.

Did we then turn on the seismometers? Did we release the locking screw on the Ranger? What happened to Bat-Boy??? Since they make a good mystery I will choose to leave them out of my elog entry.

Nancy and Sharmila received introductory early bird surf safety training for the 40m lab.

The laser chiller temp is fluctuating and the power output is decreasing. See 120 days plot.

Yesterday I removed ~300cc water from the overflowing chiller tank.

I found the laser dead this morning.

The crane people are here to unjam it.

Laser hazard mode is lifted and LASER SAFE MODE is in place. No safety glasses but CRANE HAZARD is still active.

Stay out of the 40m lab !

40m SURFs Razib Obaid, Nancy Aggarwal, Unknown Bearded SMURF, Megan Daily, Gopal Nataraj, Katharine Larson and Sharmila Dhevi received 40m specific safety training on June 23, 2010.

Slow pump down _pd68 has reached the vacuum normal state.  CC4_Rga region is pumped now. The RGA is still off.

Precondition to this pump down:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           129 days at atm,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         ITMs replaced. MMT, oplev and other components were removed from BSC, ITMCs. New MMT mirrors are in.                                                                                                             IOO_access_connector was out. The end chambers were not opened.

The AC filters will be checked and/or replaced today. This means the AC will be off for sort periods of time. Temperature and particle count will be effected some what.

See 800 days plot

I have just removed an other 400 cc of water from the chiller.  I have been doing this since the HTEMP started fluctuating.

The Neslab bath temp is 20.7C, control room temp 71F

The PSL shutter was closed. The beam path  blocked two places. High voltage power supplies to IOO and OMC PZT were checked to be off. Oplevs are off. 

The south arm green cavity was misaligned yesterday

We would like to keep the vent speed at 1 torr / min. I'm venting with N2 now up to 25 PSI. We have 3 cylinder  of instrument grade air inside the lab. Additional supply will arrive later. It can be as late as 1pm

 Thanks to Kiwamu, Alberto and Koji

The ref cavity ion pump was running at 7.7kV instead of 5kV

This Digitel SPC-1 20 l/s ion pump should be running at 5kV

The control room temp is warmer than usual. The heat exchanger Office Pro 18 set point was lowered from 70 to 68F yesterday.

The MOPA headtemp is higher also. The Neslab chiller bath temp peaks around 21.6 C daily. This should be rock solid 20.00 C

It did not have any effect.

Now, I have just lowered the thermostat setting of room 101 from 73 to71F  I  hope Koji can take this.

All 3 cranes will be load tested at 1 ton tomorrow morning between 9am and 2pm

Do not come to the 40m lab during this period. We may disturb your experiment.

Please prepare your touchy set ups to take this test.

 Little change in the AC set temp can make wonders. Neslab chiller bath temp 19.99C is back to normal and daily variation of PSL are much better.

The lab is at 30,000 and Pasadena air is at 1.1 e+6 particles /cf min of 0.5 micron.

Head count at the evacuation drill today. I checked  alarms and flashers  at room 104,102,101, 103, 105 and 107. They were really loud and bright. 

Bob and Steve closed BS chamber with the help of the manual Genie lift and the pump down started. The PSL shutter was closed and manual block was placed in the beam path. High voltage power supplies were checked to be off.

Pumping speed ~ 1 Torr/min was achieved at  1/8 of a turn opened roughing valve RV1

The PSL table height will be raised to the level of the AP table. This will be done using 6 TMC's Rigid Damped Tripod legs. Their planed positions shown below.

The legs will be grouted to the floor with concrete.

 http://www.techmfg.com/products/floorplatforms/rigiddampedtripod.htm

 We are at 370 Torr at 9 hrs of  pumping. RV1 is opened to ~ 3/8 turn orifice. We are using one roughing pump RP3  and butterfly valve is in place.

How to stop: 1, close RV1 by torque wheel  2, close V3 from MEDM screen  3, turn off RP3 roughing from MEDM screen  4, disconnect metal hose to oily pump

after butterfly valve. This KF-45 O-ring seal should be kept clean 5, place/close  45 mm cover blanks at the end of the hose and and on the 5" nipple.

How to start: 1, remove blanks from  hose and nipple 2, reconnect roughing pump hose to RV1 nipple  3, turn on PR3  4, open V3  5, open RV1 by wrench to ~3/8

6, fine tune RV1 opening to 1 Torr/min

ESSENTIAL: one operator has to be present when oilly roughing pump is connected to the vac. envelope

 3 days pump down #69 completed. Thanks to Koji  and Kiwamu  who did more roughing on Saturday and Sunday.