| The first two days we spent getting broken or
inappropriate equipment fixed or adapted. Like a piece had broken off
inside the actuator, rendering it inoperable, and the motor axles for
the fans were two small to fit the slots. So the talented and capable
staff here machined a new part for the actuator and constructed
something to fit the axles into place. |
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On wednesday, we installed and tested the repaired actuator. We
have quicktime movie of the first test of
opening the clamshell, and it went swimmingly. |
| We also installed the modified fan blowers and they
worked fine as well. We did have to carefully adjust them so that the
fan wheels didn't scrape on anything, and the thermostat was backwards
(so that the fans went on if the temperature was too low), but these
were easy fixes. |
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We also drilled and tapped the holes on the pier for the mount.
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Just in time, for the telescope arrived that afternoon. |
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We hauled it out to the enclosure.
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Then we hitched it up to a harness and hoisted it into the enclosure.
We got the telescope on the pier and called it a day. |
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Thursday, we made sure the RA axis was tilted to the appropriate
longitude, then we installed the shelves and the carpet.
Friday, put most of the electonics in the enclosure. Here
you see the "gold box" camera control unit in its new bracket
on the side of the mount. The slots in the bracket were
too small, and needed to be drilled and filed out a bit.
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We then installed the camera. We don't yet know if it is in the
right orientation to get north "up" on the image -- we will
have to take some pictures first.
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When we uncrated the secondary assembly, we found that two of
the spider vanes had been damaged in transit. Here you can see
how they have bent. The crate was not marked as fragile, so presumably
it was dropped or otherwise subject to abrupt accelerations that
could have resulted in this damage. Also, the preload screw had
fallen out.
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Here we are removing the crate from around the assembly.
You can also see an overhead view of the packing technique.
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We tried to press the bends out of the affected vanes, but when
we put it back in, one vane was no longer flush with the outside
wall of the assembly. So we used the long nut to clamp the vane into
place. Hopefully, this will not put too much torque on the outside
wall of the assembly.
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| Today we got the mount running, and are currently
trying to get the encoder readers aligned properly. We tried to start
up the camera, but the recirculator died -- we believe this is due to
the circuitry assuming a particular polarity of the power plug, and
German wall fixtures are not polarized. We need to buy a replacement
transformer and then we can try again. |