Coating Plant Progress

Telescope & Site team members Tomislav Vucina and Doug Neil travelled to Germany recently to review progress on the Coating Plant, which will be used to aluminize both LSST’s Primary/Tertiary Mirror (M1M3) and its Secondary Mirror (M2). At the MAN factory in Deggendorf, the LSST Team verified that major components of the Coating Chamber Assembly are already in place. The team then traveled to the Von Ardenne facilities in Dresden, where they inspected the Washing Boom and other components of the already-assembled Washing Station. The 9-meter Coating Chamber is still scheduled to be shipped to Chile in May 2018, and to be ready for initial coating of the M1M3 and M2 mirrors in September 2018. In this photo: Magnetron assembling line. In the picture, an empty magnetron box is showing, an almost ready magnetron and a fully assembled magnetron are showed. In total, the Coating Chamber will house eight magnetrons as part of the Deposition Sputtering System, four of them for M1 mirror and four for M3 and M2 mirrors in two different configurations. The magnetrons will have 4 different target materials for deposition: Silver, Aluminium, Nickel-Chromium and Silicon.