sPHENIX discussion of the superconducting solenoid

["Yip, Kin" <kinyip AT bnl.gov>]

Hi,

I came back to US last night.    Obviously, we're not cooling down this week.  Below is what I see :

(1)  Paul Orfin reported this morning :

"We have good insulating vacuum on valve box and solenoid.  We are cleaning out any water from our cryogenic system today including the plant absorbers and the compressor.  Once complete, we will begin the pump and purge process for all the lines.  Depending on how that initial pump down goes we can determine a timeline for the other dilution cycles and subsequently when we will start the plant. "

Paul just told me (here at 912) that after a few days of turning on the plant, they can tell whether the plant is working ~100% or 50% :-)    They could start cool-down early next week (assuming no more leaks and pipes are clean ....). 

(2) But since we want to avoid any ODH issue, we want to close the end-walls before we really cool down.   Nevertheless,
the brackets for linear-pots (which should have been made 2 weeks ago, Jim said) are not made.   Jon gives the
materials & drawings to Mike Lenz (PHENIX) after lunch and Mike will make this for us.

We need to install these extra linear-pot and do the final adjustment of the radial and axial supports (with the survey group).

We then need to install the magnetic probes.

And then we need to install all the end walls.

Then, we can cool down.

(3)  Frank Toldo sent a long report, a part of it said:
" I have now been working on constructing cable tray here in our shop  for the upper deck so that I can run and terminate the last 16  535 MCM cables to attach to the valve box. Once that is all done I have to remove the 16 cables from the valve box so that they can do the Hi pot test. Once that test is done I will then re-attach  the power supply 535 MCM cables and also the Valve box.  After all that I will then terminate about 100 to 200 terminations in the blue rack for the strain gages signals."

He should finish the initial connection of the 535 MCM cables at the current leads by this Friday.

(4) I saw Pablo's technician connecting wires.  But Pablo is still busy himself.  He sent me a message:
"Am working on Linac now, hopefully should finished by the end of next week. Then I’ll start on the PS."

Though we can start cool-down without Pablo's finishing his test, it's worrying...


(5) Apparently, it seems to me that Fred (Carl's technician) has pulled all the voltage-tap cables needed.   He's making the external-to-internal connections on the quench-detection Rack (though he hasn't connected at the other end, at the lower platform).

(6)  I have brought the computer that Frank Naase gave me one month to the table D. Phillips has helped arrange next to the quench-detection Rack.   ( Carl, feel free to re-orient and move the table ... I just move it close to the Rack. ).

After getting the right port to be allocated (port 8 : for this PC 130.199.104.188), I can now login the PC with BNL domain credentials and use acnuser01/2/3 via NX network to C-AD control environment to use "GPM", "Logview" etc. etc.

In fact, I'm typing this email from the PC (next to the quench-detection Rack).

Kin