Louisiana Tech Region I Status Report


Not really much to report  ... faculty and students are tied up in a very busy spring quarter. Last day of spring quarter: Next Thursday !!!

Currently we have two students (out of 5) working for us: Kurt Evans and Stephan White who will graduate this summer. Kurt will be working with me through the entire summer trying to catch up the work left undone by other students we fired. Most of these assigned students projects were basically untouched ... and if so, I wouldn't trust the results of gone students who have not shown any engagements or commitments for their projects ...

Done between March and now:

- extensions cables for the stepper motors completed. Needs to be revised: Student chose low current connectors for high current motor (I told him several time to change these ...)

- The CAD model of the rotator were once done in SolidEdge, the standard program for Latech engineers. Stephan did some modifications but experienced a lot of CAD troubles ... Because he is graduating soon, he started converting the drawings into SolidWorks for mr , so I can pick up his work without learning another CAD program.

CAD (only) changes done so far:
    - a less bulky support for the v-grooved rollers holding the rotator ring.
    - worm gear axis is supported on both sides with bearings. At present the worm gear is only supported on one side and is subject to flexing and high mechanical tolerances
    - a better "clicker". Currently a switch gives a "click" for each tooth of the rotator ring passing by. Replaced (in CAD) by a wheel (independent of the main worm gear) which will click a micro-switch for each revolution.

- Latech ELog  
Finally I could convince our system administrator to have an ELog server accessible on the internet (lots of security concerns)  ... It is now installed on
https://caps.latech.edu/elog/
There are currently no entries because I have not yet transfered them from the ELog server running locally on my desktop computer.

Steve Wells
- Purchased a DAQ computer, replacing the broken old one. CODA is installed but not configured yet. Should be up and running again in the summer break.
- Still searching for a graduate engineering student for testing the Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA's) based readout electronics. Steve had some luck in getting some VHDL (Very-High-Speed Integrated Circuits Hardware Description Language) programming assistance from Jefferson Lab.


Latech summer projects

0)  Going to JLab and meet with the Survey team, preferred to have a big meeting with all trackers involved. Blackout dates:  06/26, 08/10 - 08/15.
0a) Getting some CAD design help that allows to service Region 1 through the collimator shielding wall.

1) Labview Motor Control
Stated in the previous reports we will switch from Tripos or Java to LabView. I know nobody with enough experience in Java, but enough people with experience in Labview (Latech, W&M, JLab). Includes writing code and a GUI for steering the motors of the rotator heavily based on the W&M wire scanner Labview code.

2) Mechanical Precision of Rotator 
Take existing CCD camera and readout markers on the rotator and GEM sliders. Move/rotate and measure the mechanical tolerances.

3) Precision Octant Stops (Reference Points)
Related to part (2). Add/place  microswitches (i.e. one for each nominal octant position) and measure how precisely you resolve such a octant reference point.



That's all folks,
    |{laus