Inverter box construction

Lewis Elliott and Phil Kasavan assembling the LISA inverter boxes. This work was done from approximately June 1 to July 10. There are 18 boxes in total, two for each of the 9 layers of the LISA array. The purpose of the inverters is to reverse the polarity of the photomultiplier dynode signals in order for the energy signals to be processed by the charge-to-digital (QCD) VME units.

Inverter boxes stacked before soldering (all but one); several front plates and ribbon cables

Lewis and Phil hard at work assembling the boxes and soldering the ribbon cables

Tours of Argonne Lab and Fermilab

On Saturday, May 29, we visited both Argonne National Lab and Fermi National Lab.

Argonne: Caribou source, and our tour guide, Calem Hoffman, describing the Helios spectrometer


Peering inside the Helios magnet chamber, Calem discussing Gammasphere, and Alegra and Amanda in front of Gammasphere while it is opened up

Fermilab: Us standing in front of a cable rack for the CDF detector, inside the CDF control room with tourguide Ben Auerbach, and Alegra and Amanda in front of the life-size CDF "mock-up" since it was buttoned up for an experiment

The FNL administration building and visitors center, and the reflecting pool in front of the building

Re-stacking MoNA

This post is a little out of order, since this activity occured Monday, May 24 and Tuesday May 25. After de-cabling MoNA, we proceeded to re-stack the detectors into two separate arrays, each 8 detectors tall and 9 layers deep, before jacking the arrays to their proper height.

Amanda and Alegra working on the other side of MoNA viewed through the taller array walls, and Warren helping with the de-cabling

The re-stacking - shifting bars from the top layers to produce additional shorter layers

Positioning the bars to be lined up properly, and carefully negotiating the taller bars past the support posts

Alegra adjusting one of the stacked bars, and Amanda and Alegra helping to organize the loose cables

The two array halves elevated to height using stacking bricks, Shea's new cable outfit, and Michelle stepping lightly over the cabled floor

Cabling MoNA - continued

Today we continued re-cabling MoNA. Thomas Baumann calculated that MoNA has approximately 5 miles of cable in total.

Routing timing cables across the top of the electronics racks

Alegra and Amanda finishing the connections behind the electronics racks, then finding a comfortable seat in the black spaghetti

Cabling MoNA back together again

Today, Wednesday May 26, we began the process of re-cabling the MoNA array. High voltage lines, anode signals (used for timing) and dynode signals (used for energy) were reconnected to the photomultiplier bases.

The beginning of the untangling and rearranging stage of operations. Quite a lot of cables to keep track of!

Amanda, Alegra, and Michelle pack extra long cables into delay boxes.

A break for lunch at Sindhu's for Shea, Michelle, Amanda, Alegra and Warren (not pictured), some hard-hat modeling, and a view of Alegra's expert delay cable packing job ...

Alegra, Brad, Ben, and Amanda posing next to their finished delay box project. the green beast, and Amanda pulling the cable box into the underbelly of MoNA while Brad assists from outside ...

Shea running cables underneath the beam-right array, and the Westmont-Wabash-Ohio Wesleyan undergrad contingent posing together after a long day's work