[Stephen, Radhika]

After Thursday's work, we resumed on Friday and lifted up the coldplate to access the collar and baseplate. Stephen added metallized mylar wraps to the peek cylindrical spacers [pic 9, 10]. He took out the cylindrical collar and baseplate (previously there to minimize contact between the colplate and chamber bottom) and replaced them with a foil collar [pic 13, note this is before pushing down the foil over the PEEK spacers]. We re-inserted the coldplate.

In order to wrap/insulate the copper braid, we inserted 2 sheets of metallized mylar into the vacuum tube to surround the braid [pic 11, 14]. We cut the mylar wrapping so that it did not short to the outer shield. We also confirmed that the copper braid is not shorting to the inner shield hole (there was clearance for the shield to be lifted before hitting the braid). The mylar extends to the coldhead, which we then wrapped with aluminum foil, making sure not to short to the walls of the tube [pic 12]. 

We switched the foil wrapping from the inside to the outside of the outer shield, so that any radiative transfer from the inner shield to the outer shield would be absorbed as much as possible (not reflected back). We placed both shields back and bolted down the copper braid loop and workpiece. We re-attached the RTDs, then placed in both shield lids (without bolting them down) and stopped for the day.

Today I checked on the chamber setup and closed up. I started the vacuum pump and it made abnormally loud noises, indicating something was off. The percentage sign continued to flash, indicating that the pump was not reaching 80% speed. I performed 2-3 power cycles, which did not solve the issue. We will pick up to debug the issue early this week.

[update 02 June 2021]

Pumpdown and cooldown were successfully started this morning - Radhika retightened the green leak valve and pumps started just fine. We will check trends on Friday and likely will allow cooldown to proceed over the weekend.

We are both working on adding all of our photos to the photo dump at the ligo.wbridge QIL Cryostat Photo Album.