Last week we got the upper X rail ready for testing. This involved putting in the motor, encoder, rail and trolley. The test cables for the communication and control of upper X have been hung in place but not connected.

This week Ron Leck is on site to begin testing of the communications to the motors on upper X and if we can get all of the components in place to lower X as well. This will require us to connect the test cables (which do not go through the Az wrap) and thus will largely lock out any structure rotation of the duration of the test. The first motions of the slew motors will be open loop and will allow the mechanical team to see if the X-axis is well aligned. If all goes very smoothly near the end of the week we may get the laser tracker up and running to see the relative distances of the lower and upper trolleys over their range of motion.

While the structure motion is locked out, this will give the electrical team time to rearrange the Az cable wrap and once that is done to install the new cable wrap. This is likely to carry over into the next week as well.

Last week the team worked on getting the upper X rail ready for the lift of the encoder. We should be able to get the encoder in place and wired up by the end of the week. Over the last weekend we had Praxair truck on site to make sure that we can start our liquid nitrogen deliveries once the tank and VIRUS are in place. This went smoothly and TxDot was on site and will make a recommendation to widen a small portion of the Y at SPUR 77 and SPUR 78 to give the truck good purchase when making its wide turn.

Last week I also reported “The original scheduled date for the tracker to arrive was the week of Jan 27, as see in the gantt chart blogged on August 12, 2013. We should be able to make this milestone without any delays.” Given the high price of the crane services and the delicate nature of the operation we wanted to make sure we had everything in place and well tested before the tracker goes on. Thus, we have rescheduled the tracker lift for the week of February 17th.

Next week we will have Ron Leck out from Austin to test the upper X rail motion while the mechanical team assembles the lower X rail.

Despite the Holiday break we are having contractors work over the break both on the electrical power in the lower electrical room (for the new tracker) and in the dome working on the new in-floor trench for the liquid nitrogen, glycol and nitrogen gas.

In the past week we have finished the weldments on lower and upper X. This allowed us to lift the rail adaptors into place. We finished the touch-up painting of the lower and upper X beams to cover up the welding work.

The next update will be on the 2nd or 3rd of January.

Happy Holidays everyone.

Last week the electrical team finished straight pieces for the cable runs up the side of the telescope and have to purchase the transition curved pieces to finish the cableways. Weathers Electric started work on the improvements we require for the new tracker. This is likely to take 4-6 weeks but they made some progress outside with the conduit. Veliez construction was on site over the weekend cutting concrete paths for the glycol, liquid nitrogen, power etc.. They finished their concrete cuts. We had our Board of Directors meeting this past weekend and they had a chance to see all of our progress in the Wide Field Upgrade. The next board meeting will be in June also out at McDonald so that they can see the completed Wide Field Upgrade.

This week we will be finishing the weldments and then painting them. Weathers electric will continue work on site, mostly on the outside conduit. Veliez construction will be back on site later in the week to jack-hammer out the concrete cuts and then line and level the trenches. They hope to finish that effort this next weekend.

In the past week we had a very significant power outage caused by a large snow/ice storm. The outage lasted from Saturday Nov 23 until Tuesday Nov 26. The next day was spent getting all of our subsystems back up and checked. Thankfully no permanent damage was found to the facility but this has put us about 3 days behind schedule for all activities.

Since the last blog posting we have gotten a start on a number of projects high up on the tracker including: mounting the lower X work platform and handrails, modification of the lower and upper X screw weldments, welding on the lower X cable tray brackets, positioning of the lower and upper X screw mount weldments.

This week we will be welding on the upper hex weldments and installing the DAS-box weldments. When the JLG manlift is not in use by the welding team the electrical team will be installing the cable trays up the side of the structure or rearranging the azimuth cable wrap.

We also have Weathers Electric and Veliz Construction on site setting up power to the lower electrical room and cutting slots in the dome floor for the additional glycol, power, nitrogen and liquid nitrogen lines.

A very busy week….. Just in time for our Board of Directors meeting this weekend.

Last week the certified welders finished up work on the X-rail stiffener and the supports for the lower X work platform. Logan was able to strip the M4 witness sample with a fairly simple Greenriver solution.

This week we will have our local welders finish up with the tracker weldments. We will also be working on the cable trays that lead from the cable wrap up the telescope structure toward the tracker.

While working on the alignment of the corrector at UA, out team found that the coating on M4 (and a few of the witness samples that came with it) was beginning to have signs of coating failure, bubbling and spotting. Our current plan is to send the witness samples to McDonald so that we can confirm the stripping process for this very tough coating and then send that witness back to UA so that they can confirm that the witness has not been damaged. Meanwhile UA will continue to work on the corrector alignment with M4. If all goes well we will then strip the coating from M4 and send it to be recoated once they have all alignment issues worked out. The question remains about who will do the recoating.

We hope to act quickly and get M4 back to UA for final alignment before shipping to McDonald in the spring.

So far this does not pose an imminent threat to the WFU schedule.

Last week we finished up the metrology measurements of the upper hex and all of the cableways in the lower electrical room and spectrograph room.

This week we will have welders on site working on the channels for the lower X stiffener and also the new work platform for the outside of lower X. We are also taking apart the MRS enclosure for storage, reshelving the Az cable wrap and installing static cable wrap. We continue to be on schedule.