Monday, June 10, 2013

The long road to recovery

From Thursday's, it was found that the actuator contacts in the actuator holes of the reference body showed significant oxidization where there were problematic actuators.   

On Friday, a number of apparently good actuators were removed to check if that oxidization was present there as well.  Approximately 10% of them showed damage and extrapolating that to the complete shell means that operational performance would be impacted.   

Thus, the decision has been made to remove all the actuators, inspect the contacts and clean where necessary.  We should end up with contact oxidization cleaned, distribution boards cleaned and remounted as well as the astatic levers and cables etc.. at the end of the visit of our Arcetri colleagues (A. Riccardi and M. Xompero).

Reinstallation of the actuators, component checkout and reintegration of the shell, check out of all the boards and contacts,adjustment of the membrane shim, installation of TS4 board (currently in transit from Arcetri to LBTO), shell cleaning. shell mounting to the reference body, initial tests of reassembled unit, check-out of the AdSec unit in the lab on the installation mount to verify system performance, installation of the AdSec unit into the hub and the hub back onto DX, alignment of the AdSec unit and calibration with the 4D interferometer to build a new interaction matrix, system alignment calibration with retro-reflector for both FLAO and LBTI systems, and on-sky commissioning are some of the tasks to accomplish in the weeks to come. What a list!

Stay tuned as we walk this long road to recovery...


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