TY - GEN
T1 - Fiber links for the WEAVE instrument
T2 - SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2020
AU - Mignot, Shan
AU - Bonifacio, Piercarlo
AU - Fasola, Gilles
AU - Horville, David
AU - Caffau, Elisabetta
AU - Dorent, Stéphane
AU - Croce, Sébastien
AU - Blanc, Sébastien
AU - Melse, Basile-Thierry
AU - Younès, Youssef
AU - Reix, Florent
AU - Gaudemard, Julien
AU - Dalton, Gavin
AU - Schallig, Ellen
AU - Lewis, Ian
AU - Stuik, Remko
AU - Middleton, Kevin
AU - Bishop, Georgia
AU - Abrams, Don Carlos
AU - Trager, Scott
AU - Aguerri, J. Alfonso
AU - Carrasco, Esperanza
AU - Vallenari, Antonella
AU - Laporte, Philippe
AU - Barroso, Patrice
AU - Noûs, Camille
PY - 2020/12/1
Y1 - 2020/12/1
N2 - The WEAVE instrument nearing completion for the William Herschel
Telescope is a fiber-fed spectrograph operating in three different
modes. Two comprise deployable fibers at the prime focus for point-like
objects and small integral field units (IFU), the third is a large IFU
placed at the center of the field. Three distinct fiber systems support
these modes and route the photons to the spectrograph located on the
Nasmyth platform 33m away: the first features 960+940 fibers and is
duplicated to allow configuring the fibers on one plate while
observation is carried out on the other, the second has 20 hexagonal
IFUs featuring 37 fibers each, the third is a large array of 609 fibers
with twice the former's diameter. The large number of fibers and the
diversity of their instantiation have made procurement of the parts and
assembly of the custom cables a challenge. They involve project partners
in France, the UK and the Netherlands and industrial partners in France,
Canada, the USA and China to combine know-how and compress the schedule
by parallelizing assembly of the cables. Besides the complex management
that this induces, it has called for revising the fibers' handling to
relax tolerances and for a rigorous assessment of the conformity of the
products. This paper tells the story of the making of the fiber links,
presents the overall organization of the procurement and assembly chains
together with the inspection and testing allowing for assessing the
conformance of the hardware delivered.
AB - The WEAVE instrument nearing completion for the William Herschel
Telescope is a fiber-fed spectrograph operating in three different
modes. Two comprise deployable fibers at the prime focus for point-like
objects and small integral field units (IFU), the third is a large IFU
placed at the center of the field. Three distinct fiber systems support
these modes and route the photons to the spectrograph located on the
Nasmyth platform 33m away: the first features 960+940 fibers and is
duplicated to allow configuring the fibers on one plate while
observation is carried out on the other, the second has 20 hexagonal
IFUs featuring 37 fibers each, the third is a large array of 609 fibers
with twice the former's diameter. The large number of fibers and the
diversity of their instantiation have made procurement of the parts and
assembly of the custom cables a challenge. They involve project partners
in France, the UK and the Netherlands and industrial partners in France,
Canada, the USA and China to combine know-how and compress the schedule
by parallelizing assembly of the cables. Besides the complex management
that this induces, it has called for revising the fibers' handling to
relax tolerances and for a rigorous assessment of the conformity of the
products. This paper tells the story of the making of the fiber links,
presents the overall organization of the procurement and assembly chains
together with the inspection and testing allowing for assessing the
conformance of the hardware delivered.
U2 - 10.1117/12.2562305
DO - 10.1117/12.2562305
M3 - Conference contribution
VL - 1450
T3 - Proceedings of the SPIE
BT - Proceedings Volume 11450, Modeling, Systems Engineering, and Project Management for Astronomy IX
PB - SPIE
Y2 - 13 December 2020 through 18 December 2020
ER -