[Radhika, Aaron]
The goals for this cooldown are:
1) Securely re-attach the RTD to the cold head, to fix wacky readings.
2) Reduce thermal conductance between the outer shield and cold plate (/copper bar), to prevent the outer shield from cooling below 200K.
2a) Stabilize the outer shield so that its contact area with the cold plate is consistent run-to-run. ([Note] Follow-up to an in-person comment from Rana: the positioning of the shields does not leave space for any clamps to secure the outer shield to the cold plate.)
On Tuesday 2/22, we opened up the bottom conflat of the T to check on the RTD spring-clamped to the cold head. I re-inserted the RTD and tightened the nut further than last run, and it seemed much more secure [Attachment 1]. I re-inserted the mylar "cap" covering the cold head [Attachment 2].
In the chamber body, we carefully passed the RTD leads through the inner shield and outer shield apertures to remove the outer shield. We did this without having to unclamp/remove the inner shield or any components inside, to preserve consistency with the last cooldown. A few pins were damaged in this process (from inner shield).
Once the outer shield was removed, we used kapton tape to secure strips of peek sheets to its bottom rim [Attachments 3,4]. The strips were taped at 2 points along the rim associated with the most wobble, with hopes of stabilizing the shield as much as possible.
On 2/23 I repaired the pins previously damaged. I also added kapton tape labels to the socket leads, corresponding to the shapes found on the RTD leads (semi-circle example in Attachment 5). This way it will be much easier to match the right pins and sockets in the future.
I then bolted up the chamber (close-out pictures can be found on the QIL Google photo dump). The vacuum pump was turned on at 5:45pm, and the cryocooler was turned on at 7:08pm. |