A few notes from CERN (23 Oct 2001, Paul Poffenberger):

*) UVIC's portion of the ft shop is fully set up.  With the
   addition of a lockable storage cabinet (donated by Dave
   Pate from his office, since CERN didn't seem up to the
   task...) the working environment is now clean and tidy,
   with ample room for the tasks to be performed.

*) The ECC delivery to CERN is now delayed until January
   (I believe that the fix for the omega seals did not
   work) with ft installation no sooner than March.
   Expect ECA to be delayed by a similar amount since
   SIMIC manpower is tied up with ECC.

*) The barrel weld repair will be done at CERN, rather
   than being shipped back to Japan.

*) John has been mobilized with a (gutless) CERN van.
   No problems using to and from home.  CERN provides
   a map of 'legal' use areas, restricted to more-or-
   less within the LEP/LHC ring.  No lead time was
   required to acquire the van; we had it within ten
   minutes of walking into the office (with Rob).

*) The resistance multiplexer (Euro-Phred, built by Neil),
   crosstalk shaper/amplifier (Euro-Sam, built by Neil),
   and the fanout and scanner power supplies (built by 
   UBC) were all designed and built with switchable
   input power (115/230 V).  On powerup, both Euro-Sam
   and the fanout power supply blew their fuses when
   tried at 230 V.  Euro-Phred and the scanner power supply 
   were not tried at 230 V.  All these devices are now being
   run with the 230/115 V stepdown transformer that we
   brought with us.  This is a workable solution which
   should be ok through the duration of the reception
   and weld tests.

*) Euro-Phred (the resistance multiplexer) apparently
   did not survive the trip intact.  It still multiplexes,
   but the resistances are unstable to about 150 mOhms.
   This is most likely due to a problem on the board,
   possibly a bad gate.  However, I have long been 
   considering removing the resistance tests from the
   reception tests, and certainly from the weld tests.
   At Victoria, the 'final' resistance tests (last
   test done before shipping) provide much useful
   information:

   -) By subtracting the expected vacuum cable resistances 
      (from computer data files) from the measured
      ft resistances for each channel, we can verify
      that the vacuum cables we *think* are in the
      ft are actually, and also in the correct orientation.
      This is a very useful check.

   -) The residual pigtail resitances give a clear indication
      that each slot has the correct type of pigtail, since
      the resitance of the pigtails vary by type.

   -) The calibration channels can be seen to be tighly grouped
      in the resistance measurements.

   While these measurements are useful to be done once in
   Victoria, it is not clear that it is useful to perform
   them again at CERN.  In fact, there are a number of reasons
   not to do them:

   -) The addition plugin required for the tests provides one more
      chance of bending a pin at the warm flange, and possibly
      inducing a leak.

   -) The additional time required for the resistance tests
      might become a burden; it already requires about
      five hours for the cross talk tests.

   -) The main purpose of the reception/weld tests is to detect
      problems that might have been induced from shipping or
      welding.  I don't believe that there are any such problems
      (broken trace, broken ground, short to ground, short to
      neighbor) that would not be picked up by the cross talk
      tests.

   I would still like to have a working resistance measurement
   system here, as it might prove to be a useful diagnostic
   if certain problems are encountered; Euro-Phred will be
   returned to Victoria for repair.  However, I would still
   like to remove the resistance tests from the standard set
   of reception/weld tests done at CERN.  I have discussed
   this matter at length with Pierre Pailler, who is in agreement
   with this proposal.  Please let me know your thoughts on this
   if you have any reservations about discontinuing the resistance
   tests at CERN.

*) The throughput of vacuum and electrical tests (crosstalk only)
   is about one ft per day.  We are doing the bellows leak
   check only *after* the crosstalk tests, just in case a
   leak was induced in a pincarrier from the crosstalk tests.    

*) Pierre Pailler has proposed that the electrical tests done
   after ft installation proceed as follows:

  -) Install the first one (or few) ft's, then do the electrical
     checks to ensure that the installation procedure is not
     damaging the cables.

  -) After the first one (or few) ft's are installed and tested, 
     no more electrical tests will be done until after the manifolds 
     are in place.

  -) Do the electrical tests on all ft's after the manifolds
     (and warm cables) have been installed, with connections
     made between the baseplane (we'll have to make a connector
     for this) and the pigtail.

   The main motivation for this proposal is to minimize the possibility
   of pincarrier leaks from bent pins, and is still open for 
   discussion.

---------------------------------------------------
   Paul Poffenberger          phone (250) 721 7741
   Dept of Physics            fax   (250) 721 7752   
   University of Victoria     email pof@uvic.ca
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