2. STAR Project Summary
Excerpt from the STAR Monthly Report - January, 1996
Reported by Bill Edwards
I am going to use up valuable space right up front to highlight some recent progress. This is what the STAR construction project is really about!
TPC -There's finally something to show for all that hard work. We now have a lot of real final hardware sitting in one place. Here's a list of the big pieces on the shop floor at LBL:
- Storage box after storage box of completed TPC Outer Sectors
- The OFC gas vessel with CTB rails mounted (see Photo-of-the-Month)
- The prototype sector mounting tool (SMT)
- A 1/2 scale prototype of the Central Membrane
- Test stand hardware.
- The 2 aluminum Wheels (14' in diameter with more than 2000 holes in each!) are due in early February.
- We'll begin to wind the Outer Field Cage itself, in early March.
Not everything is moving along quite so well. On the one hand, the Assembly Building construction is once again progressing. The sub-contractors are back on the job after a meeting between BNL Plant Engineering, Dayton Construction and the bonding agent. On the other hand, the completion schedule is still in question, as is the impact on STAR assembly/ installation.
The revised plan (taking into account funding limitations in FY96 and FY97) for STAR construction was completed in January. We're now working on implementation, including a final FY96 budget request, etc.
There was a STAR Collaboration meeting at Rice University in Houston, Texas in January. There was also a very useful meeting at BNL to get us over the hump on the final specifications for the electronics platforms.
One final bit of news, bad for STAR, good for John. John Sterling left the STAR Project Office this month for a job in the private sector. He is going to be doing work that is close to his heart in the Environmental field.
TPC Summary and Highlights
The rebuilding of the OFC mandrel is nearing completion and the first of 46 copper/Kapton strips has been cut to width. The prototype inner sector is nearly through the assembly process and 5 more units are at various stages of completion. All sector backers are fully machined and ready for cleaning and bonding. The conceptual design effort on the central membrane was restarted. The present design calls for a membrane fabricated by bonding 30#161# segments to form a continuous sheet. The Wheel vendor, STADCO has finish machined both units and is in the process of performing the final inspection. The laser raft fabrication fixtures and raft support parts are complete. Measurement of mirror angles and location continued in January. Shipment of custom gas system components from Russia is scheduled for February. The Sector Mounting Tool (SMT) inner sector manipulator was assembled on its support. Tests of the SMT revealed several problems that will need to be addressed before it can be used.
Magnet Summary and Highlights
The first coil package was potted by Tesla early in January. A preliminary examination showed nonuniform coating. Re-potting was planned but electrical tests showed a short between turns within one double pancake. The plan is to repair the coil before re-potting. The second coil was partially unwrapped and extra insulation added in the weak points.Production of magnet steel is proceeding and by the end of February, the lower nine backlegs should be delivered to BNL. Work is proceeding on the main supports. Machining of the endrings is underway, and the steel for the endcaps is underway in Japan.
Electronics Summary and Highlights
An updated version of the FEE card has been prepared, tracking the latest changes. Along with this, an updated FEE board tester is being designed. We are also upgrading the SCA tester to use a 66 MHz digitization clock. The prototype readout board was received back from fabrication and is being populated with parts and debugged. The STAR FEE group is getting settled in the new laboratory.The DAQ group has received the production run of ROSIE boards and checkout is in progress. The ASIC order has finally left BNL. We are negotiating with the vendor to increase the number of prototype chips so that board development will not be delayed by the ASIC schedule. The DAQ software workshop was well attended and very successful. An overview of the workshop has been published on the Web under `meetings'.
Trigger has moved to the new lab space and is now up and running. The VPD TDC tests are continuing. Design of the full 16 channel DSM prototype is going well, with changes including VME64 access to input buffers allowing 64 bit reads, block reads implemented and inclusion of a daughter board for the FPGA engine to allow easy updates for new FPGA technology. The Cypress ROBO-CLOCK hs been added to each DSM and TCU board to calculate 4xR/S locally.
A very successful Slow Controls workshop held during the STAR collaboration week was well attended. Chip Watson introduced the cdev package developed at CEBAF and Marty Kramer elaborated on the usage of EPICS.
Computing Summary and Highlights
Altair was upgraded to DEC UNIX 3.2. The transition plan and schedule for moving to the new Moast analysis framework was presented during the STAR collaboration meeting at Rice. An updated version of the prototype state manager was installed into the CVS repository on AFS to make it available to the other groups. The Java language and run-time system is being used to develop a user interface to the prototype state manager. The new Geant for STAR, called GSTAR, and the code which reads the GEANT Zebra hits and kinematics banks and fills TAS tables was installed, tested and documented. Three new software library packages were installed in connection with the implementation of GSTAR. The HBT event generator was modified for 3D source geometries.The STAR Software Survey.
The management of the STAR SAS group, the STAR SOFI group, and other STAR software-related groups, are charged with insuring that a large number of unfinished software tasks get completed by an extremely limited number of participants. Such a task will prove impossible if this limited manpower is not properly organized to meet the most critical needs in an efficient way. The efforts that are dangerously undermanned or unstarted must be identified. Priorities must be defined. New manpower must be located, and correctly matched with the current highest priority needs.
To accomplish all of this, it is extremely important that we obtain a clear and concise picture of the status of all present STAR software efforts. We have therefore distributed a copy of the "STAR Software Survey" to everyone on the STAR mailing list (starmail@lbl.gov). If you did not receive a copy of the survey please contact Bill Llope (llope@physics.rice.edu) and we'll see that you get one.
If you are presently working on STAR software of any kind, if you are interested in starting such projects, or if you want/need to participate in any kind of STAR software-related discussion, we officially ask that you respond to this survey.
The success of this "information drive" depends entirely on how detailed each of your responses are, so please answer each question as explicitly as possible.
The "due date" will be noted in the text of the survey. Given the importance of this survey, we promise to relentlessly harrass the procrastinators.
We thank you in advance.
Bill Llope, Bill Love, Doug Olson, and Lanny Ray.
It gives me great pleasure to inform you that Tim Hallman will be coming to Brookhaven in early April as the leader of the STAR group here. Tim spent six months here from July 1995 until January of 1996 as interim spokesman of STAR. It was a very productive period, increased STAR's visibility here at BNL, and helped to push forward some of STAR's long term goals. I believe that Tim's presence here at BNL will benefit the local group as well as the entire STAR effort.
Work continues on the assembly building, but on a slower pace than scheduled. The structure is still not yet closed up. It is hoped that all of the siding will be on within the next week.
We are now in the second stage of the election process which was defined in last months newsletter. The first stage, collecting a list of the present STAR collaborators which qualify as Junior members (either a student or less than 5 years past their PhD by the date of the election) resulted in a smaller list than I expected. It is not too late for STAR collaborators who qualify as Junior members to identify themselves and take part in the election. Our goal is to get as complete a participation as possible. Please send me an E-mail (christie@bnl.gov) if you are a Junior member or if you have any questions.
The election is now in the "Call for Nominations" stage. I've sent out the present list of Junior members to everyone on the list and asked for names to be submitted to me for the ballot (self nominations being permitted and encouraged). This nomination stage will last until March 15th. I plan to send out the list of eligible Junior members again before the close of nominations so that any new names can be considered.
I will do everything that I can to allow eligible collaborators to participate in these elections.
3. Contributions
The following contribution was submitted by Bill Llope, Rice University
4. Notice of Meetings:
Software & simulation Workshop
Week of April 15th, 1996 to be held at LBNL.
Further and more specific information on this meeting can be found via the STAR homepage on the WWW. (STAR -> Calendar -> Workshops).
5. Christies Corner
Greetings from beautiful Long Island New York. The first few weeks of February were unusually cold here on the Island, with quite a bit of snow. I believe that this winter (so far) has had the 3rd highest total snowfall on record for Long Island.
UPDATE ON JUNIOR MEMBER REPRESENTATIVES ELECTION
6. Comings and goings at STAR
None reported this month.