SC Readiness

Alex Wallace 

A The LCLS directorate held a Run 21 readiness workshop was held in early September to review preparations for the arrival of the LCLS2 beam. After the workshop, LCLS formed an LCLS taskforce was formed SC Readiness taskforce (Delta Force) to tackle some of the issues issues, risks, and scope raised at the workshop. The effort is ongoing .and we're having a blast!

ECS created a Run 21 readiness dashboard for the workshop you can review here:

https://jira.slac.stanford.edu/secure/Dashboard.jspa?selectPageId=14380

Any controls/data/timing/IT issue that is considered essential or important for the arrival of SC beam, or SC commissioning, KPP measurements, or validation measurements is labeled with an sc-readiness label and this makes it appear in the dashboard.

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We officially completed the Jira epic to update the SDL after nearly a year. Please refer to the SDL for system design and support.

One item of note is the status of Micronix piezo actuators and drives. Due to some concerns over reliability, these drives have been marked as EOL, meaning they are not approved for new designs, nor approved for purchase for new assemblies. Existing configurations are still supported, as are is purchasing replacements for existing configurations. For more information contact Tyler Johnson .

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TXI will conduct RP testing on the HXR line in March - April 2023. This test is to verify air attenuation models at different repetition rates.

During this long summer shutdown, the setup for the vacuum and motion lines was almost completed (October 2022) in the FEE.  Panel B940-009-R17-DRL-01, B940-009-R17-DRL-02, B940-009-R17-DRL-03 and, B940-009-R17-DRL-04 are now installed and grounded on the alcove, and the FEE device cables (GCC, GPI, VGCs ) tested using the test boxes by Josue.

DC panels and cables were installed in H1.1 in the middle of September.

The devices will be shortly added to the PLC by Jyoti. All the long-run cables needed for the RP test have been properly pulled but not terminated due to a shortage of connectors.

The vacuum panels and cables are almost ready to install for both, HRX and SRX, lines. The installation work will continue in the coming weeks in Hutch 1.1.

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we started controls work in FEE and TMO hutch for both (HXR & SXR) TXI lines. This includes design, some procurement, panels/cable fabrication, installation, testing and PLC/IOC software work. All the Vacuum and Motion PCLs are setup and both TXI lines in FEE area are online with Pydm screens.  

TMO hutch installation is still ongoing and we plan to have that work completed by end of this year depending upon the hutch access during upcoming PRP experiments and other related work.  

Motor soft-limit display issues

Zachary L Lentz 

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A long-standing, GUI bug, causing inconsistencies between the display limits, the limit protection in the python layer, and the limit protections in the motor IOC, has been fixed. This issue occurred for specific motor types due to python GUI/display related classes failing to notice underlying limit position updates.

This bug is caused by differing behavior in how certain motor IOCs update their limit metadata and possibly how this metadata propagates (or does not propagate) through the channel access gateways.

Automatic pitch adjustment for offset mirrors

Waters, Nick 

Offset mirrors will now auto-pitch along with the ability to select a coating position. Desired pitch positions based on hutch and coating can now be saved in a notepad. When users request a coating, the mirrors will respond by moving to a preset coating position and then auto-pitching.

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Better power supplies for 901

Federica Murgia  For safety reasons, all the DRL  All din-rail power supplies in building 901 have been replaced by sealed, desktop power supplies for better compliance with electrical safety. 
The new 24V desktop power supplies are currently stored in office 113 F, and they can be used only for the racks in building 901. 
Each power supply comes with a power cord and a 24V power supply cable 3ft long (they are all labeled). 

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Please, update the equipment track tracking sheet if you take one of them.  

Improvement of python environment testing

Zachary L Lentz 

It was noted recently that the Python environments update too dramatically from release to release. Our python environment is a mix of SLAC+ECS developed libraries in combination with other open source software (OSS) projects. We adhere to a policy of rigorous testing and refreshing all dependencies when we update our own libraries, but it has become clear the pace of external community "unexpected bugs" far outpaces our testing capacity.

We've added more local testing steps and have rewritten our update scripts to minimize dependency updates. Hopefully this brings us to a state where most bugs introduced by an environment update are minor and mostly our own creation, rather than being introduced by an external OSS contributor.

Imaging systems and network impact analysis

Zachary L Lentz 

We've recently looked into some theoretical limits for running imager systems (GigE cameras) in general and on our IT infrastructure. The methods, reasoning, and conclusions can be browsed at Understanding Camera Network Traffic Limits.

In a related note, TMO triggered GigE camera acquisition has seen stability issues as we approach these theoretical limits. These issues can cause dropped frames which is problematic for DAQ data. Efforts to stabilize these is ongoing.

Ion Pump QPC Controller Issues, Improvements Incoming

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We contacted Gamma Vacuum regarding issues with long-run (cable distance) ion pump QPC controllers and their noisy signals pressure readings in August. This led to a meeting with Edwards Vacuum, their partner company, where we discussed a temporary solution to update the controller firmware with an unreleased version. This unreleased firmware was also being used had been deployed to solve similar issues in Germany as well as in and the AD at SLAC. In October, we updated the firmware on B940:009:R03:PCI:01 inside of the FEE. This improved the stability of the pressure report reading on two of the three working ion pump channels, however there was still some variance in the third channel. 

A second Another ongoing issue is the inability to run all four QPC channels at once without error. When all four channels (and sometime even three or two) are run , simultaneously the device controller will eventually error-out trip off all channels . These topics were due to an error. This topic was discussed with Edwards as well, but this the fix is to replace the CPU chip in each QPC or to procure completely new QPCs with necessary hardware updates and RMA the controllers with issues. All QPCs with the 4-channel error must be sent back to Edwards so that they can replace this chip, but this is not possible at the current time with supply-chain issues and critical dates for beamoperations. We are pushing to get new QPCs, which were ordered last year, to be prioritize prioritized in their backlog so that we can replace these controllers and send the defective ones out to be fixed.

In additionFinally, there have been multiple problematic ion pumps on the HXR line that have been delivering lackluster vacuum levels for months; The worst of which even had to be replaced at one point. One pump has been replaced. After a long RMA process due to the aforementioned supply chain issues, the controller for all of these pumps was swapped for a freshly RMA'd one. While the pumps are able to stay on consistently now, they are still delivering lackluster vacuum levelstheir pumping capacity seems to remain sub-nominal. They have been Hihi-Pot pot tested and the worst performing pump was determined to fail the hi-pot test. This debugging process is ongoing.

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Margaret Ghaly 

The HE Controls team have presented their preliminary design , as of early October, completed PDR for 4 out for of the 7 L5 WBS areas: XPP instrument controls, MFX instrument controls, FEE and XRT area and Common components controls design. Pending the review report, the team is ready to start Final designs. Components. Congratulations team! Preliminary design activities for the other areas are on track with good engagement from the team. Activities for 3B reviews and drilldowns preparationsare in progress. 

Validated Machine Configuration Database Project Update

Alex Wallace Validated Machine Configuration Database System Project

We The latest news on the project is that we have a concept demo up and running. We still need to find some bandwidth to polish the frontend, and then we'll be ready for a release. Aiming for early November.

Laser, Beam Transport System (BTS)

Ken Lauer 

The Beam Transport System connects the NEH interaction points with the laser hall laser sources through an easy to operate, and safely interlocked interface. A new motion control screen and back-end system was developed and deployed for the NEH Beam Transport Systemin September. This system includes configurable, archived values for nominal beam delivery positions from every laser source to every laser destination, automated source → destination motion control, and protective logic checks to protect against equipment damage. The system determines laser destination based on motor position, making the active laser destination available as PVs. The GUI provides graphical feedback of motor positions, as well as estimated beam delivery based on system state (see the green lines below representing the approximate beam path). 

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With the changes to the lightpath interface, we have updated the package documentation to include information on what lightpath expects and how to ensure your python / ophyd device can be read by lightpath. (https://pcdshub.github.io/lightpath/)

A lightpath demo has been set up, try it by running:  (and let Robert know S. Tang-Kong  know if anything doesn't work)

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