A comsic ray test stand is being supplimented with the Forward Tracker prototype and a ~1m quartz bar. Previously the stand was composed of only 2 scintillator strips and a lucite bar. The lucite and Quartz bars of of similar length.
1.) Gas System: A 70% Argon and 30% CO2 bottle of gas has arrived. A Gas handling system is in place. Only remaining components are connects to attach the GEM chamber to the bottls and the flowmeter. The were order last week and should arrive soon.
2.) GEM Power supply. A MWPC supply is in house to provide the < 3 kV needed by the ionization chamber and GEM foils. We need to finish constructing a current monitoring device to double check the power supplies current trip off.
3.) Readout: Connectors for the Helix chip have arrived. We will begin testing the Helix board next week to determine its limitations. The use of a wirebonding machine to connect the Helix Chip inputs to the GEM detector has been delayed. We expect it will be available in September.
4.) DAQ: A trigger board and ADC have been added to our existing CODA based DAQ system.
5.) Cosmic test stand. The existing test stand of a 90 cm
long lucite paddle and two 1 cm wide scintillator paddles
has been supplimented with the Quartz prototype bar. PMT
bases are being constructed to attach to our 2 new phillips
2" PMTs. The GEM is sandwhiched between the lucite and
quarz paddles.