Minutes 4-11-2007
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FDC Weekly Meeting
Date: April 11, 2007
Participants: Daniel, Simon, Brian, Tim, Kim, Roger, Chuck
Next Meeting: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 @ 1:30 p.m.
Contents
Cathode Prototyping
- Brian has been working on preparing the tensioning of one of our new dummy cathode planes with the copper strips. His plan is to begin the tensioning process tomorrow. An important aspect of this work is to determine the tension in the cathode. Tim has produced a write-up describing the procedure. The plan is as follows: 1. Determine the force on the cathode from the electric field. 2. Determine the allowable deflection of the cathode at its center. 3. Convert the field force to a point force at the center of the cathode plane. 4. Calibrate a dial indicator in the deflection range with twice the approximate expected deflection. 5. Setup the cathode plane in the tensioning device. 6. Set up the dial indicator over the cathode plane until it just touches the cathode surface. 7. Tension the cathode plane until the indicator moves the desired amount. - In this process we do not want the dial indicator to damage the surface. Brian will work to include a piece on the end of the meter to spread out the force over a larger area. - Tim will participate in the measurements to be sure that we can get a meaningful result. Simon will work to transform this tension measurement into a measure of the deflection at the center of the cathode. Assuming the surface shape is parabolic, we can then map out the shape of the surface over its full extent. Simon will also work to compute some measure of the gain variation across the chamber. - On the dummy cathode Brian has drawn a circle. His plan after the tension is to measure this circle to check for lateral distortions of the cathode surface. - Brian has given a piece of the cathode to the JLab Survey Group. They have passed this on to a company called Brown and Sharp in North Carolina who will attempt to perform an optical measurement of the surface flatness. Once they develop the technique, Brian will bring the completed cathode to them for measurement. The plan is to perform these measurements with the cathode in a vertical orientation to avoid issues with sag due to gravity. - We discussed an alternative plan for the cathode backing. Given the worries associated with electrostatic distortions, it may be that we can employ a modified design for the backing. Instead of a solid piece of Rohacell, we could consider using two thin Rohacell skins sandwiching an inner core of a low density foam or of a material like Nomex honeycomb. Brian will make some contacts to get us some material samples.
Cathode Frames
- Simon has passed the design numbers for the composite cathode frame on to Dave for MC work. He will also pass this information on to Richard and Eugene so that they can complete some studies.
Simulation
- DSC has been in contact with David regarding MC work on two fronts. 1). Determine the size of the beam hole that we can deaden to give us acceptance down to 1 deg. The present nominal design is to deaden a fixed circle of 7-cm diameter independent of z. However the 1 deg point increases as a function of z. Given that the rates increase dramatically as we go downstream, it makes sense to increase the size of the deadened region for each package. Once we have an answer on the deadened region, we can then complete the design of the cathode planes and address whether we want to split the central cathodes in two. This has an issue with calibrations due to the change in capacitance near the end of the half strips as well as in reconstruction of the cathode coordinate near the ends of the strips. 2). To determine the HV granularity, we need to consider minimizing the number of wires per HV channel (in case of wire breakage and the need for HV disconnects) and we also need to consider equalizing the current per channel. These two issues will force us to compromise. David will provide information on the rate per wire. This is essentially equivalent to the current per wire.
Circuit Boards
- Roger has not yet found a company to produce the cathode material in a single piece. He still has two companies left to contact. However he is confident that we can probably reduce the number of cathode pieces from 3 to 2. More to come. - Brian had some exchanges with a PCB company (CCT Marketing). They can make our STB and HVTB boards as a single piece provided that we go to a two-layer design. There may be other options out there so that we do not have to move away from our current 4-layer design. - With the new gas mixtures that we are considering for the FDCs, it seems that our current design with 3-kV rated capacitors will be on the edge. We will most likely have to move to 5-kV rated components.
Wire Frames
- We discussed again the idea of leaving cut-outs in the G10 wire frame behind the capacitors. This is something that we will move to design in detail. This will give us access to replace the capacitors should we ever have to and they will therefore not be buried under the circuit boards.
Attachment Feet
- Last week Chuck presented a design for the feet that will attach the FDC packages to the rails. His initial design was quite beefy and we discussed ways to reduce the material. Chuck will revisit this and consider thinner materials and plastics. More to come on this.
Small-Scale Prototype Cathodes
- Roger has completed a first layout of the new +/-75 deg cathode boards for the small-scale prototype. His design was a single layer design. We asked him to modify this to be a two-layer design with a ground plane layout similar to the existing boards. We do not want to change too many things at once. - We want to order boards on a 1-mil Kapton backing with 5 microns of copper (1/7 oz) and 2 microns of copper. The 2-micron choice was made because this seems to be the thinnest copper layer that we can find.
Work List
- The FDC short-term work list has been posted on the FDC web site (see http://www.jlab.org/Hall-D/detector/fdc/). DSC is still waiting for feedback and comments from the group.
Magnetic Field Tests
- We are still waiting to hear back from Brian's contact at BNL regarding a magnet for our tests. It may be that the magnet does not have its orientation in the proper direction. DSC reminded Elke about her contacts in DESY and she said that she will get back on this. - After the meeting DSC talked with Elton. He suggested that we consider using the old pair spectrometer magnet in the downstream alcove of Hall B. DSC will find out more about the field strength and the gap of this magnet, as well as its availability this summer for tests. The field in this magnet is vertical. Elton seemed to remember that the gap was 6-8 inches high.
Minutes prepared by Daniel. Send any comments or corrections along.