Thursday, September 29, 2011, 10:54

UO2/C mixture was made on Tuesday Sept 27, casted on a piece of glass and let dried in the fume hood for ~2days. 

Dried UO2/C mass = 61.72g

Target material is wrapped /w graphite sheet and put on a new heatboat coated/sintered /w TaC.

Heat boat is wrapped with 3-Ta heat shields. 

Evaporator chamber is currently being pumped down. 

Friday, September 30, 2011, 10:01

Evaporator has been pumped down over night, IG currently @ 2.92e-6 Torr, BP @ 27mT.

TGHT will be stepped up to 40A and allow the pressure to slowly increase.  

Friday, September 30, 2011, 10:30  

TGHT is holding at 40A/0.139V  (local @ 37A), and pressure is slowly increasing, expect pressure to stabilize at ~4.5e-5 Torr before being auto-heating.

See attachment#1: TGHT_40A. 

Friday, September 30, 2011, 13:39

TGHT has been at 40A for more than 3 hrs.  Pressure went as high as 6.9e-5 Torr and it's now coming down.  (See attachment#2:  TGHT@40A_3hrs)

Auto-heating is initiating.  TGHT rate @ 0.1A/min to reach to max current of 525A.  (see attachment#3: parameter.jpg) 

Sunday, October 09, 2011, 10:44  

Target heater reached to 520A and held for a few hours.  

Evaporator was cooled down last night and TGHT is now at 0A.

(For the overall process, see Attachment#4: UCx#3_batch1.jpg) 

IG1 @ 5.7e-7 Torr.  Chamber will be vented with Ar on Tuesday. 

TGHT is off and water valve is shut.  

 Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 13:10

Evaporator glovebox was purged with Ar prior to venting the chamber with Ar.  

Layers of burnout marks were coated all around the inside of the evaporator (see attachment#5. Evpr_afterprocess.jpg), 

Before cleaning, the evaporator chamber had ~200,000 cpm. 

The heating boat containing UCx was removed from the evaporator and stored in the "orange" case, then transferred to the Ar-glove box.

Weight of UCx flasks:  47.15g (See attachment#6: UCx#3_batch1_mass.jpg)

The evaporator was thoroughly cleaned; the burnout marks were removed, and it will be used for UCx#3:batch#2 - UO2/C process.