Progress Report - July to August 31, 1999

Accomplishments / Status

Summary: After the Restart Review, work started immediately on linear and rotary drive and optical mount prototypes and on thermal and gravity deflection analyses. The results of the drive and mount prototypes will be incorporated into the design of the GNIRS mechanisms. These tasks are prerequisites to the Pre-Fabrication Review, scheduled to be held in February, 2000. Open items from the Restart Review were 1) a software plan, and 2) settle open items and additional costs with IGPO. Closure has been reached on (2), open items. The software plan is still pending.

Next Milestone: USGP quarterly review of GNIRS to which IGPO will be invited in October.

Optics: The RMI Optics order has been restarted. A new contract has been negotiated with II-VI for the Offner Secondary and Collimator mirrors. Work has started on the design and specification of the remaining optics in GNIRS. These flat optics will be ordered by the end of this calendar year.

Mechanical Design: Detailed design of the Main Optics Bench Assembly and Wavefront Bench are in process; these are being done in parallel with the thermal and gravity deflection analyses.

Mechanical Fabrication: Instrument component fabrication, except that needed to support prototype testing, is planned to start in December ’99 – January ‘00.

Cold Motor Qualification: The Phytron motor selected for use in GNIRS is the larger Series-52 motor. This is the same motor used in the NIRI instrument. Cold motor characterization for establishing optimum drive current, etc., will complete in November.

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

Software Development: There will be two sets of software written for the GNIRS project: Engineering Test Software and the actual System Software. The requirements SDN for the Engineering Test Software has been written and is posted as an SDN on the web site. This code will be written entirely in C and will be used to test and run the instrument until the deliverable System Software comes on line. It is planned that the Engineering Test software will interface with, and become part of, the System Software.
 
 

Problems / Solutions

Software Engineer: An individual experienced in EPICS needs to be assigned to the project by March of 2000. In the interim, a C Programmer needs to be identified to write the Engineering Test Software.
 
 

Key Personnel

Jay Elias’s title has been changed from Co-Project Scientist to Project Scientist. The titles of Brooke Gregory and Dick Joyce, who are part time on the project, have been changed to Support Scientist.

Al Davis has been added to the project as Vendor Liaison and Parts Manager. Al will be responsible for coordinating all vendor procurement and parts on GNIRS.

Dan Eklund has been added to the project as Project Assistant and Scheduler. Dan has helped construct the project schedule and will assist in tracking progress and costs on the project.
 
 

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