Minutes of feedthrough meeting of 30 July, 2001. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Present: Pof, GV, AD, ASD, FH, MGF, RKK *) Milestones - The HEC ft11 and Special ft12 were cold tested last week. ft12 developed a short to ground on pin 7 slot 9b at the cold flange (unknown which side) during the cold test. The short, approximately 4.7 Ohms to ground, was not present after cabling, and has not gone away after subsequent warming. Given the high resistance of the short, we speculate that it is a small piece of conductive debris that is causing the short. Pof will look into the possibility of attempting to burn it out by running some regulated current through it at a relatively low voltage. We'll do some trials with a prototype vacuum cable first to ensure that the vacuum cable isn't damaged. - Update on Tuesday: After setting up a bench test, we determined that with 500 mA run through a vacuum cable and a 5 Ohm resistor (voltage drop = 3V) the 5 Ohm resistor quickly became too hot to touch, while the vacuum cable showed no evidence of heating. We tried this on the shorted pin, and got no higher than 300 mA in just a few seconds before the current dropped abruptly to zero and the short was apparently burnt off. We can hopefully use this technique to cure ground shorts which appear after shipping the feedthroughs to CERN or after installation. We have applied this same technique to the ground short on ft00. Less than 100 mA was required before the short disappeared. We now have only one feedthrough with one ground short, ft01, which I will investigate next week. - The ambient flange heater with a temperature controller was tested during the cold test of the HEC ft11. Holding the centre of the heater at 24.9 degrees, with an ambient room temperature of 22.6 degrees, the power required by the heater was 21.5 Watts. This is slightly lower than the 24 - 28 Watts predicted, however the ambient room temperature was also higher than usual. It should however also be pointed out that these tests were conducted without the warm cables attached and without the enclosure of the pedestal, whose effects on the ambient temperature around the warm cables are unclear. - The replacement pincarrier for the leaker that was returned to Glasseal has been cold cycled and leak tested and is ready for use. *) Five heater plates are to be milled this week for the fuse block. Once these are done, the heater plates and other parts will be turned over to the electronics shop to be assembled. *) Aaron and Greg are leak checking the vacuum manifold to be used at CERN. *) Aaron and Greg are working on the shipping crates. *) There was some discussion regarding the intended use of a heater shunt to provide extra heating to the LV HEC warm cables. Since space is already tight in the pedestal region, it is unclear that there would be enough room to manouver the LV cables to their correct placement if they are constrained by the heater shunt. It is also not clear that they are really required; with the heater plate held at 25 degrees, there was no sign of condensation on the LV pins at the warm flange (the relative humidity was about 50%). Terry had suggested the shunts as a simple passive means of preventing condensation on the LV pins, and assuming that the HEC heater plates would be kept at the same (lower) temperature as all the others. If we decide to go for the heater shunt option, then we will have to work with a more complete pedestal mockup (perhaps BNL's) and with the real LV HEC warm cables to determine the optimum design. If we go for the elevated HEC heater plate temperature option, we will have to check with those in charge of such matters that we can control the heaters such that the HEC feedthroughs are maintained at a higher temperature than the others. *) Pof will check with Claude Eder of LAL, who gave the talk "Control of feed-through heaters, power supply" at the Cryostats and Cryogenics meeting at the July LARG week, whether or not it will be possible to control some (ie, the HEC) flange heaters at a higher temperature than the others. Pof will also request a copy of the talk. *) BNL is currently working on their ft # 28. *) The feedthrough meeting minutes (under password access for external sites) are being maintained at: http://wwwhep.phys.uvic.ca/~uvatlas/atlas/feedthroughs/ The CERN presentations (not under passord access) are also at that site, in both the original ppt/doc formats and also pdf format. Agenda for next week: (moved to 10:00 Wednesday 8 August) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ - Milestones - Shipping crates - Heater plate wiring jig - Plans for the week - AOB