I machined aluminum blanks for the vapor cell and the MOT slower window today. I placed 2 .25” holes 1.5 cm apart in the center of the vapor cell ones and a 1 cm diameter hole in the center of the MOT window. When I brought the vapor cell windows up to 380 C the windows were now at ~330 C in the center which means that they will work just fine. I didn’t have time today or I would have looked for fluorescence in the cell.
I should mention, if I already haven’t, that when I earlier thought that the master 922 nm laser was starting to act finicky and weird it was because Michael had disconnected all of my piezo drivers. So it was finicky and weird, until I plugged them back in.
We vented the MOT chamber today to find out why the ion gauge had suddenly stopped working. It turns out that the shield that protects the lower part of the collector from deposition had been knocked loose of it’s spot welds when we were banging on the MOT window. I tacked it back on with Torr Seal vacuum epoxy and we’ll see how that goes tomorrow. Since we already have epoxy on the MOT mirror in the vacuum that seemed like a better idea than welding the shield back onto the gauge.
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