It has become almost certain that my last day of work and my last day in NY will be March 11. That's perfect, because it's a Friday. Twila is flying out to drive home with me, and if we leave on Friday we'll be home Sunday evening. I'd planned to tell NuSTAR today that I want to formalize that date, but....
It was a day like any day. I rolled out of bed at 03:30 and hitting the floor woke me up. I was mostly awake when I arrived at the lab. I was unloading FM1 and had turned to put a load bar in a tray, when I heard a disturbing noise. The brake holding the optic in place had slipped, and the optic had rotated and dumped about 8 load bar/strongbacks on the machine base. I noticed shattered glass when I was sorting out the mess.
Only one piece of glass had broken, plus some cracks in the underneath layer. I was calm. It didn't seem a huge deal. I'd seen worse. I texted the powers that be and later talked with Todd, who also was calm. Broken glass or not, life was good. But....
Later I heard from Todd that FM1 experienced another catastrophic crash like the one on Layer 106. A disaster. *** I just found out what happened. The computer controls how far the grinding wheel goes toward the optic. As the layer numbers increase the optic is getting bigger, so the wheel doesn't move as far. FM1 is now on Layer 127, but the number on the computer (which I didn't touch today, BTW :p) was Layer 69. Not good. *** It will take a few days to repair FM1. The ultimate completion date won't change, though, unless FM2 is delayed. Or unless FM1 loses so many days that FM2 catches up with it.
I decided not to say anything today about my last day, considering.
No comments:
Post a Comment