Progress Report - May 25 to June 24, 1999

Accomplishments / Status

Summary: The May 25 Interim Design Review was held as scheduled with David Montgomery in attendance for Gemini. His report, with response comments from the GNIRS design team, may be viewed on the GNIRS by clicking here.. The Restart Review is scheduled for July 20-21. Activity on the GNIRS design was slowed on June 21 in order to perform costing of the instrument and to prepare for the Restart Review.

Next Milestone: Restart Review (July 20-21).

Optics: The update of the GNIRS optical design is complete. Any additional work will be scheduled as part of the regular project effort, which commences after the Restart Review.

The II-VI optics contract has been renegotiated, and the Offner secondary and collimator mirrors will be procured from II-VI as part of the contract closeout. The Offner primary, secondary and the collimator will all be diamond-turned alumniplated mirrors with protective coating to facilitate handling during assembly and alignment. The remaining flat mirrors will be glass.

RMI will be authorized to start lens fabrication after the Restart Review.

Mechanical Design: Preliminary design is nearly complete. Details need to be completed for the Main Optics Bench, the Wavefront Sensor Bench, and for several subassemblies. The Preliminary Design effort will extend past the Restart Review through the month of October.

Mechanical Fabrication: Instrument component fabrication, except that needed to support prototype testing, is planned to start in January ‘00. The Test Dewar, being provided by NOAO, is complete, and characterization testing is in process.

Cold Motor Qualification: The specific Phytron motor selected for use in GNIRS has been received and this motor has been baselined for use in the instrument. Testing is not yet complete on this smaller motor, but the larger Phytron motors provided by Gemini for preliminary evaluation have been successfully tested. Testing on the smaller motor will resume after the Restart Review.

Electronics Design: Electronics systems information is installed on the web site and may be viewed at ftp://ftp.noao.edu/gnirs/elect.

Software Development: No activity.

Problems / Solutions

Software Engineer: The March and May reports stated that an individual experienced in EPICS needed to be identified and assigned to the project. We are still working on a solution to this problem.

Key Personnel

Andy Rudeen is assigned at the 20% level on the COB for Gemini effort. This is an approximate 6-month assignment, which has no detrimental effect on the GNIRS project.

Dan Eklund has been added to the project full time through October. Dan will be working in the area of Project Scheduling. Our plan is for Dan to work on the GNIRS project ½ time after October.

Al Davis has also been added to the project to assist in cost estimating and vendor contracting.

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