Minutes of meeting held on Thursday 4/3/99 at Daresbury ======================================================= Present ------- Tim Greenshaw, Derrick Hill, Graham Houghton, Scott Kolya, Gary Markey, John Morris, Dave Sankey, Graham Stokes, Terry Sloan. We were pleased to here that Rob is now back at home and, while far from fully fit, is much better than he was in Hamburg; we wish him a speedy and complete recovery! Action items from meeting on 28/1/99 ==================================== Graham H -------- Graham told us that an order has been placed for Nomex panels for 6 chambers. The decision to go for panels for 6 chambers was taken as the costs for the PCBs plus panels for 6 chambers are less than £5000 more than those for 4 chambers. We have ordered Strafil skins. Graham will check with the manufacturer, as a matter of urgency, whether this may cause problems with the ethane and/or alcohol in the planar gas. Graham described the procedure SpemCo can use to reduce the overall thickness of the copper on the PCBs. They can first take off 5 microns of copper from the entire board in an etching process, then electroplate to cover all surfaces including the vias with 5 microns of copper, then apply the masks and etch again to leave only the required electrodes with the vias. This gives an electrode thickness of about 18 microns and the vias are of thickness 5 microns. Discussions highlighted the importance of HV tests of boards produced in this way. Graham also described how simple finite element analysis (FEA) of the tank could be done and studies made to determine the order of magnitude of the size of the twists expected in the Forward Tracker due to the suspension mechanism. Of particular interest is the construction of the front right tank foot, which is sprung. John Morris stressed that a comparison with data required some care due to the differing co-ordinate systems used in Rob's alignment and the FTrec software. Action ------ Graham Check Strafil OK with alcohol/ethane! Tim Pass on relevant information (weights of tank etc.) to Graham. Graham Make simple FEA of FT tank support and possible twist. Don --- Don passed on the information via e-mail that details on the the above-mentioned foot and the spring can be obtained from the drawing number 2-TB-0011-029-01-A ``FOOT ASSY-SPRUNG''. If alternative springs should be required, Andy has told Don the address of the relevant company is: ANACO Springs Ltd., Hithercroft Industrial Estate, Wallingford, Oxford OX10 9DJ. Don also passed on the information from Karsten Gadow that the left hand rail on which the FT is supported (looking in the +z direction) is consistently about 2mm lower than the right hand rail. Action ------ Tim Try and get more accurate information on rail. Tim --- Tim explained that the radial Noryl machining tolerances were ±30 microns. We have specified ±25 microns for the Noryl blocks. Derrick ------- Derrick told us that an order has now been placed for the Noryl. This is costing us about £6000 more than foreseen as we have not been allowed to get the work done by Dave Stanley of RAL as it is classed as a production job. Graham H -------- Graham described studies of the Medelec pins done by Gary. These show no slippage when crimped using the Oxford (?) crimp tool with the following loads (only the largest are noted) applied over 24 hours. load (g) field wires 750 sense wires 187.5 Girish ------ Girish was unable to attend because of the work he is doing for Erwin Gabathuler preparing the Liverpool documentation for the PPC. He told Tim that little progress has been made since the last meeting for the same reason. Tim --- Tim gave an update on the budget situation. We have now spent all we are allowed to spend in this financial year. The project now has only £15k ``uncommitted'' (i.e. left after paying for all items of which we are currently aware). This figure includes the higher than expected costs for the Noryl end pieces. Graham H -------- Graham has prepared new schedules, but discussion of these was postponed until next meeting. The work currently going on in the clean room will allow much more accurate schedules to be prepared in the near future. Review of facilities for planar construction (Gary) --------------------------------------------------- Gary showed us the production facilities. The clean room looks good. All facilities for the planar construction are in place with the exception of a pillar drill which would help with the insertion of the pins in the Noryl blocks. The tensioning jig may also need a little work. Tests using Medelec pins show that the wires can be threaded through these. How long this will take is not yet clear but tests are underway. Gary has started studying construction problems using the old prototype planar. The major problem that has appeared is that of doing the crimping. The crimping tool Gary used for the tests mentioned above cannot be used for the construction of the planars as its shape means it cannot fit onto the pins in the Noryl blocks without causing damage to adjacent pins. The crimp tools constructed according to the RAL drawings do not work; they can be used to access all pins (just), but the resulting crimp is not firm enough. On the subject of pins, Don has passed on information to the effect that low oxygen, low phosphorous copper should be used for the pins for chemical reasons. There are likely to be problems with wires breaking over time scales of months if this is not done. There was some discussion on the desirability of glueing as well as crimping the wires. It was stressed that the crimp tool must be developed in conjunction with the pins. Changes in pin diameter for example may well mean that the crimp tool needs redesigning. Action ------ Gary Contact Ray Thompson and ask about crimping/crimping tools Tim Take crimp tool to DESY, talk to DESY experts about tools and about crimping and glueing. Review of situation w.r.t. testing planars ------------------------------------------ The group came up with the following list of items necessary for testing the planars as they are constructed. Gas tanks (nearly completed) Gas Ar:CO2 HV supplies (RAL systems available) Current monitors (RAL nA monitors available) HT feedthroughs (6 available) Connecting cables within tank Cables (some at DESY, perhaps those shipped from Liverpool useable?) Pre-amps (available) Feed-ins to ADCs (available at DESY) Storage 'scope (available at Lancaster?) ``Readout system'' Scott reported that available at Manchester are 2 FADCs in a VME crate with a Scanner plus NIM electronics to generate all the input needed by the Scanner. These come with the software used ten years ago for the RAL tests. Ethernet connection (in principle no problem) Trigger scintillators, PMs power supplies etc. (all available, Derrick) We may also be able to get hold of one of the ``mini-controllers'' used for test work at DESY. This would allow us to use existing software for producing histograms of efficiencies etc. Action ------ Derrick Check situation w.r.t. cables needed for tests. Tim Look for ``feed-ins'' at DESY. Get broken scanners from DESY. Order gas. Terry Check spec. of Lancaster 'scope with Scott, ship to Daresbury. Scott Organise getting Manchester kit to Daresbury Dave Talk to Daresbury PC support about ethernet, IP address etc. Additional person power for upgrade software -------------------------------------------- Murrough Landon, Eram Rizvi and Beate Heinemann have all expressed an interest in working on software for the upgrade. Beate cannot be given anything to do at this stage; her first priority must be to finish her thesis! We would like Murray to liase with Guenther Eckerlin and work on the HV control system, upgrading it according to Guenther's new ideas and adding control for the additional chambers. Eram would like to work on the pattern recognition/linking/track fitting side of things. We will discuss this with Rob and see where he best fits in. AoB --- Gary suggested that Inspection Reports be asked for on all items out for order. It was agreed that this is a good idea. It was also suggested that full-scale drawings be prepared to aid rapid identification of errors in the producion of PCBs, Nomex etc. Action ------ Graham Ask for Inspection Reports. Thanks to all present at the meeting! Next meeting, Liverpool, Tuesday 6/4/99.