Free Electron Laser Commissioning Meeting

Friday, 3 Apr 98
Recorder: C. Bohn

Next Meeting

Date: 10 Apr 98
Time: "0845"-0945
Place: FEL Facility Break Room 


Agenda for Next Meeting


                Item                             Person Responsible     Time
                ----                             ------------------  --------
Status of Open Action Items                             All             5 min
Scheduling and Commissioning Program                    Bohn/All       45 min
New Issues                                              All             5 min
Agenda for next week                                    All             5 min

This Week's Attendees

S. Benson, J. Bisognano, C. Bohn, J. Boyce, J. Delayen, D. Douglas, R. Evans, J. Fugitt, L. Harwood, A. Hofler, R. Li, L. Merminga, G. Neil, D. Oepts, P. Piot, M. Shinn, Q.-S. Shu, T. Siggins, M. Spata, R. Walker, B. Yunn

Closed Action Items

Items of Discussion

This week's activities involved running low-average-current beam to the straight-ahead dump and using it to commission the Machine Protection System (MPS), particularly the beam-loss monitors, and various diagnostics including the beam-position monitors and multislit emittance monitor. The multislit needed to be gated at 2 Hz in keeping with the logic of the MPS, and this new feature required debugging. At this writing, there is some indication that the electron beam is not properly aligned through the cryounit, and time is scheduled in next week's plans to try to clean up the beam before working toward optimizing injector setup for 60 pC.

C. Bohn summarized the commissioning plans for the near term, mid term, and far term. We could still conceivably lase by the end of May and do the first user experiment in June. Kilowatt-level light might be achieved by the end of the calendar year depending on how things evolve during commissioning and an interleaved user program.

Beginning this weekend we will be running from 0800 Monday through 2400 Friday each week, and we will not run during the weekend. Beginning 6 Apr 98 we will run from the MCC and generally have CEBAF operator support. Exceptions will occur if there are serious problems with the main machine, or possibly following major main-machine down times. We all need to make every effort to facilitate working from the MCC and be grateful for the opportunity to work together. The "FEL operators" will generally stay on the same shift throughout the week. This is not necessarily true for the "CEBAF operators" who will be under the discretion of the CEBAF Crew Chief. We need to work toward being able to reduce the FEL operators from two to one whenever possible, but for at least the next two weeks, two FEL operators will be assigned to each shift to join the one CEBAF operator, and during that time we will work out the bugs. Needs that are presently known include:

In the immediate future, it will probably be generally necessary to station one or both of the FEL operators in the FEL Control Room during each shift. In that case, head phones would be used to communicate between the two control rooms.

The group considered a list of questions having to do with near-term commissioning activities:

J. Boyce announced that the FEL ARR Process Review is scheduled for May 27, 1998. All five panel members have agreed to serve and the panel will be chaired by Larry Coulson (FNAL). We need to be getting ready for this.

New Issues

None.

New Action Items

Old Action Items

Procedures in Work 

Emittance Growth from CSR

Thread Beam around Machine, Top-Level           Douglas, finalize 6 Mar 98
RF Stability during Energy Recovery             Merminga, 6 Mar 98
MPS/BLM Checkout for First Light                Mahoney, 8 Apr 98

(Note:  The highest-priority item here is the procedure for MPS/BLM
Checkout for First Light!)