From lserna at nrao.edu Wed Jul 1 16:08:00 2009 From: lserna at nrao.edu (Lew Serna) Date: Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:08:00 -0600 Subject: [Escoordminutes] ES Division Coordination Meeting minutes-June Message-ID: <4A4BC220.3010804@aoc.nrao.edu> Minutes for the ES Division Coordination Meeting held on Tuesday, June 30, 2009, at 10:30 am, in the LL CB conference room. Attending were Lew Serna, Charley Chavez, Bob Broilo, Gene Cole, Brent Avery, Jim Ruff and Jon Thunborg. BUDGET ?Budgets are being spent down quickly be sure to monitor your spending. Stimulus money to the tune of about $5.5M is reported for NRAO to be spent by 2011. No firm word on how it is being doled out but it is reportedly earmarked for infrastructure projects. It is likely that some ES Division items on submitted lists will be funded. We are also awaiting news from Mark McKinnon on gearbox funding for training, oil and gears. E-Array project funds are also being sought which will mostly be contract work but likely some ES Division work will be involved. PARTS RESTOCKING SERVICES.- The Auto and Track groups are trying out the automatic restocking by Fastenal. Reports are that the program is working very well for them. Other groups such as Antenna Mechanics and HVAC may be interested. Supervisors are asked to provide input on their groups? interest. Surplus Tires?the pile of bad tires is growing. Business division is looking for a place to take them to because the Socorro dump does not want to accept them. The cost for disposal of bad tires rests with the Auto Shop. No action until further notice. VLBA ? The Mauna Kea (09/10/09-09/16/09), and Los Alamos visits remain for this fiscal year. A Mechanical Visit to Los Alamos is scheduled for 7/14-7/16. Eric has provided Mechanics with a task list for LA. The Brewster and North Liberty foundations continue to degrade and will require urgent repairs in the near future at an approximate cost of $15K each. Foundation work has been placed on the funding wish list and is expected in FY2010. Work is preferred in the fall not in the winter since it requires much time to cure. The pillow block bore dimension of the SC wheel assembly was measured and is ok. No good reason for the bearing failure can be found. A check to ensure that the he warehouse has stocked remainder of Wheel assembly parts necessary to replace all remaining original wheel assemblies including a spare should be made. HN, MK and KP require one each assembly to be replaced. The warehouse should stock one set of parts but no more. We will continue in FY2010 with Maintenance visits to HN, FD and BR. Repair of the subreflector brought back from St. Croix is in progress. Tony has been transferred to track crew so another person has to be trained to repair. MK dish panels that were damaged were replaced. The damaged panels will need to be repaired for spares. A Servo Preload Modification has been designed by Paul Johnson (LA) and Eric Carlowe for swapping servo preload in order to load the opposite side of the servo gearbox gears. This should double the life of the gears in the gearbox. Outfitting of modification will continue on Maintenance Visits. It is possible that passports will be required in future visits to St. Croix. Some work installing Ka band feeds may be required in the near future. Guy is checking into using and testing new materials (more affordable) for making spare dichroic panels. AZ BEARINGS ? Four Bearings were shipped to Rotek for repair. Only 1 of the four bearings was refurbishable. A second bearing inner race was touched up and the bearing will be reassembled, usable as an emergency spare only and has been labeled ?emergency spare only?. A third new bearing is fabricated and shipped. There is a 2 year minimum lead time for new and refurbished bearings from Rotek. Antenna 5 bearing and AZ 2 gearbox is changed with Bob Broilo as supervisor. Bolts for three antennas have been ordered. Older grease samples show that antennas 25, 10 and 20, are candidates for scheduled bearing changes. New grease samples of all VLA antennas have been taken. Antenna 25 has the worst sample and will be in line for replacement in 2010. This is an EVLA antenna. An estimated three weeks in the AAB are required before a bearing change can occur. Parts from the bearings removed from antennas are needed for measuring and fitting of new parts and should be stored until they are scheduled to be shipped for repair. 12 bearings have been replaced to date. It is desirable to order 5 new bearings before long. PROJECTS: CONTROL BUILDING STAIRWAYS? The Control Building Stairways are being replaced due to their rapid deterioration. The stairways will be replaced with an improved design conforming to ADA. The western stairway is complete. A new concrete landing will have to be poured at the base of the eastern stairway and the steps replaced. The eastern stairway barricaded to prevent its use. There is no urgency for this project since safety has declared that there is no need for this stairway as a means of emergency egress. Work on the eastern stairway will continue as the workload permits. No further progress. ST Croix PAINT MAINTENANCE VISIT?It is Apparent that a follow up painting program should be initiated preferably in the fall. It is desirable to send a crew to St. Croix to continue painting areas where bleed through is evident. If this is not possible due to budgetary constraints, then perhaps the site techs could do the painting for 3 weeks straight with hired help sometime in the fall. Jon will recommend that Site Techs do spot repairs until enough funds are available for a follow up painting program. VLA ANTENNA FOUNDATION MOVEMENT? A problem with north arm antenna foundation movement needs to be addressed. It appears that the two rearward station pillars have been slowly separating over the years at CN6, BN3, CN7 and BN5 with BN5 being the worst. They have separated far enough in about 33 years that 1 bolt (one on a reward pad) can no longer be used to secure the antenna pad to the foundation pillar. Modification of the CN6 plates and BN5 are complete and the plates are reinstalled. This will solve the immediate problem of setting down antennas on these foundations. Markers have been set for taking measurements to try and see which pillars are actually moving and at what rate. No change has been observed between loaded and unloaded measurements however better; finer measurements need to be taken throughout the year. If the pillars are moving apart it is felt that there may be no practical way of preventing the movement. It is believed that if this is the case it would be more desirable/practical to build an additional foundation next to the bad ones. Another option is that if the pillar movement is very slow it may be adequate to modify/redesign the mounting plates in order to make up and correct for the movement. In any case it would be desirable to get an outside structural firm to inspect the foundations and make a recommendation. GENERATOR REPAIRS? Minor leaks were noticed at the engine rear seals and it is desirable to install a better fuel filtering system. A bearing on the generator unit also should be replacement as a PM. This work would cost around $15K and has been put on the funding wish list. HOT WATER LOOP. A project is submitted to install a hot water loop using Correlator waste heat: The difference between the summer load and winter load is mostly due to heating (at least 300kW). However, even during the coldest mornings the cooling tower is ventilating correlator waste heat into the atmosphere. We already use some of the heat in the Control Building, but by extending the hot water loop to other buildings, we may be able to reduce our power demand. The WIDAR correlator will have an even higher heat output to work with. This project mainly consists of burying a hot water loop and using heat exchangers similar to what many complexes of buildings use. Payback on this project could be as quick as 1 year. Bob Broilo will investigate and provide further information. No progress.. 125vdc GENERATOR SUPPLY MODIFICATION. A safety switch and other related wiring changes to the VLA Standby Generator Battery supply have been completed in order to make servicing the batteries a safer operation and without interruption of the battery supply to the generator system controls. New safety procedures and training will have to be provided to personnel who service the batteries. This project is complete. VLA AZ GEARBOX?s (Antenna 5 etc..)--Antenna 5?s #2 gearbox experienced a catastrophic failure failed on Wednesday, April 15, 2009. Antenna 5 #1 gearbox was ok. We replaced the bad gearbox with the spare gearbox. The bad gearbox is salvageable and will be repaired. Several gears will be fabricated in a shop out of Carlsbad, NM for around $800ea. VLA Az Gearboxes are due for oil changes. A plan to change around 10 antennas per year is being formulated beginning with remaining 6 VLA antennas and then continuing with all EVLA antennas @ approx. 10/ year. Training and equipment will be required. Guy Stanzione will be in charge of preparing for the gearbox inspections, training & repairs. VLA FRM?One VLA FRM focus ring gear was damaged last year. The spare FRM was cannibalized in order to repair the Antenna. A new ring has been ordered for repairing the cannibalized spare at a cost of $3K and should arrive soon. FRM inspections will resume during the next antenna overhaul cycle to check for possible FRM overhaul tasks. BALLAST DOORS-- New project is proposed to convert manual opening of ballast car doors to hydraulic controlled opening of the doors for dispensing ballast from the cars. Much dust is created and the operator is too close to the doors to be able to observe the dispensing properly and safely. This Project will cost around $8K. EVLA; Civil? Correlator Room: The Air Conditioning system needs to be tied in to the CPCC for controlling of air handlers when desirable and during emergency shutdowns. ESD monitoring equipment is installed on the door closest to Ops, to be used prior to entering the shielded Correlator room. For controlling traffic to the correlator, a special one way door will be installed at the end of the elevator hallway. It will be used for exiting the correlator area only but will be capable of being propped open for passing equipment through if necessary. The doors are in and will be installed next week. Safety has scheduled fire alarm testing with Operations on August 25, 2009. Bob will coordinate that effort with the annual battery maintenance. EVLA Antennas?The Antenna Group must complete mechanical overhauls to 23 antennas to meet the retrofit schedule for EVLA design in FY2009. This goal is currently on schedule A total of 20 S-band (2-4 GHz) feed horns will be fabricated in FY2009. S-band feeds are assembled so far. All rings have been cut for the S-band. The Ku-band (12-18 GHz) feed horns will also be fabricated in FY2009. This is on schedule. A prototype insulating of the feed cone/vertex room is done in EVLA antenna 25 in an effort to improve temperature stability in the feed cone/vertex room. Bob has used a thermal imager to see where we are losing most of the heat in the feed cone. An analysis and recommendation will be made as soon as time permits. Antennas will remain in the D array for 7 months. As antenna #7 goes on line it is desirable to replace some of the early EVLA antennas with newer version EVLA antennas. Older versions will begin to be decommissioned (since the VLA Correlator cannot operate more than 22 antennas) for upgrades in the field. There will also be a period of 2 months (Jan. & Feb.) that there will be no observing due to the Correlator being shutdown . This is an opportunity to bring older antennas up to date. SAFETY REPORT: No Safety Officer present Safety Manager, Bob Daniels will visit the VLA on July 13. Training on Hazard recognition and mitigation is forthcoming. Training on Arc Flash protection. ANNOUNCEMENTS: ETK Training (Electronic Timekeeping) Electronic Timekeeping?? For /exempt/ staff members, we are requiring that you utilize /both/ the ETK system and the paper timesheets beginning with the current pay period April 21^st through May 20^th . All NRAO /non-exempt/ staff members are required to utilize /both/ the ETK system and paper timesheets until further notice. /Supervisors/ will approve the paper timesheets as usual but will also approve all ETK entries at the end of the pay periods. * * *2008 PERFORMANCE EVALUATION PROCESS * *June 30 Appraisal Forms Completed *? Supervisor reviews completed performance appraisal forms with division head and receives approval. Supervisor begins scheduling and holding evaluation meetings with employees. *June 17 Employee Meetings Concluded *? All evaluation meetings to be concluded and appraisal forms signed by the employee. Employees should be given sufficient time (at least 24 hours) to review and comment on the evaluation. Based on information provided by the employee, supervisors should make corrections and changes as appropriate. *July 31 All Forms Delivered to HR *? All of the original completed and signed appraisal forms must be forwarded to the appropriate Human Resources Office. A copy of the signed appraisal should be provided to the employee