The first two nights of this run are for MIRAC (PI: Leisenring), while the last 4 are for AO (PI: Morzinski). Therefore I decided this was my chance to come up in the morning to see the installation of MAPS. See, usually I try and sleep in on the morning before a MAPS run, to help me switch to a night schedule. But instead today I got up in the morning as usual, headed up to MMT, and was able to observe the installation of the Top Box and ASM with a full MMTO crew as well as Dan and Ruby from MAPS. This is important to me because we’ve talked a lot about the installation procedure and whether it can be made more repeatable, but I hadn’t actually seen the full procedure yet. Now I have a much better picture of the process and thoughts about repeatability.
![](https://xwcl.science/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2024-05-17-12.09.39-768x1024.jpg)
So here’s what I saw. When the Top Box is installed there are 4 feet on the lift that can be independently adjusted. However, the actual measurement of how parallel the Top Box plate is to the Cass plate is through hand-held measuring tapes. There are 2 pins that help guide the Top Box up. And in the end the plates were flush. But I was wondering whether there could be any skew on one side or another.
![](https://xwcl.science/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2024-05-17-12.06.35-1024x768.jpg)
The ASM installation is complex. The ASM is mounted to the hexapod. This is done while the former is hanging from the crane and the latter is supported on a bouncy stand — so could these be misaligned? But then the screws are gronked on until the plates are flush, except for a gap covering about 20deg on one side where the ASM plate is warped, of about 4 thou. Then the hexapod is mounted to the hub. It’s behind a flange, but the 2 pins keep it aligned, one of them is diamond shaped to control angle, and then the screws are gronked on until tight so we assume it is flush too.
![](https://xwcl.science/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2024-05-17-15.07.43-1024x768.jpg)
![](https://xwcl.science/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2024-05-17-15.21.38-768x1024.jpg)
![](https://xwcl.science/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2024-05-17-15.44.56-768x1024.jpg)
![](https://xwcl.science/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2024-05-17-15.50.27-1024x768.jpg)
Also Dan and Ruby connected the rack and all our other cables:
![](https://xwcl.science/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2024-05-17-12.51.44-768x1024.jpg)
Then tonight was supposed to be a MIRAC night but they had a chiller problem and weren’t cold enough, so instead we decided to try AO.
Except instead it still took over half the night to complete set-up and alignment. So we continue to explore how to improve these procedures.
Even though this is the MAPS run not the MagAO-X run, I’ll stick with the MagAO-X blog rules for this run. Therefore, the best 15 minutes of the day were seeing the ASM mount to the Hexapod and then the whole assembly mount to the Hub. I have to admit I’ve never quite pictured it correctly when we talk about in our off-mountain meetings, so this helped me visualize what’s happening very well!
Song of the Day/Night: “…Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears (1998)