Log of 2008 events

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January 22, 2008,

Tuesday January 22, 2008, from David Bennet

It was a good meeting with many subjects discussed. Highlights:

  1. Dick has the control box essentially finished. He has components and materials for all the rest of the motion servo hardware. This is a big deal and a lot of work on his part.

  2. He also has the necessary PLC modules, Lattice. Unfortunately, they have started charging $100 for a license for their software, which previously has been free. Dick is exploring ways around this charge, since he was told a while back that the software would always be free.

  3. Voltages available in the presently available power suppplies are
    5v (10v unregulated),
    plus/minus 15v (22v unregulated)
    plus 40v
    plus 200v
    It was not completely clear if these would be sufficient for the read/write, but Joe felt that supplemental power could be added to the r/w chassis if need be. So the above were determined to be the total of the servo power supplies.

  4. It was decided that the rad/write circuits and controls would be on a separate chassis, 19 inch, 2U high. This keeps the mechanical packaging of the motion servo and read/write separate for the simplification and convenience of all.

  5. The plan for a high level controller is still open. The motion servo initially will be controlled by address switches, but the design is such that the control can be passed easily to a PC controller or even a unique hardware design if that is the ultimate decision.

  6. There was considerable discussion about recruiting additional team members for the read/write design as well as the high level controller and programming. Al will follow up on some leads that he has.

  7. Dick and Dave will explore the possibility of Dave picking up a portion of the hardware build, most probably completion of the power supply, at some appropriate time in the near future.

Please revise this with anything that I may have missed or mis-stated. And let's keep in contact. I'll call a follow up meeting when it seems appropriate. Let me know if you think one is due.

Thanks!

Dave