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T O P I C R E V I E W
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Xanthine
Member # 736
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 posted December 05, 2009 13:48
There's nothing anyone can do about this (trust me. I just need to vent.
I somehow slid through a crack and ended up with a post-doc at the top-tier physics institute three doors down from my former department. Seriously. This is, like, a Nobel laureate farm. And one of the reasons it is a Nobel farm is they have fantastic support staff, including a world-class machine shop staffed with excellent machinists who made various parts of my instrument. This machine shop is also open to students, some of whom aren't so excellent (though there was one who actually ended up deciding that rather than getting a PhD in physics he'd like to be a machinist and now works in the machine shop). This machine shop is also located directly above the room my instrument is in. And my instrument is very sensitive to acoustic noise.
This is all kinds of less than ideal and when they're working especially hard, it shows up in my data. These last couple weeks have been bad for some reason. I'm lucky in the sense that my signal is big enough to get past the extra noise, but I was hoping that today I could get some nice quiet data because it's the weekend. Right?
Wrong. Some student is up there right now, running a machine so hard I can not only hear it, I can frickin' feel it. And it's screwing me up big time. Seriously. I can't do shit while that thing upstairs is running.
The worst part is, the student up there working is probably thinking the same thing I am: it's a Saturday afternoon, it's all quiet and lonely and I can get some work done!
![[Mad]](mad.gif)
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The Famous Druid
Member # 1769
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posted December 05, 2009 14:29
Find the electrical circuit-breaker for the machine shop ![[evil]](graemlins/evil.gif)
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littlefish
Member # 966
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posted December 05, 2009 15:10
Well that's a bit crappy. I'd go have a word, and find out if/when they'll stop.
If not, sod off home and cut your losses.
If it carries on, move your instrument to a lab in the basement.
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Xanthine
Member # 736
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posted December 05, 2009 15:39
We are in the basement.
There is, however, a sub-basement, where our AFM is. Thing is, other people also use that sub-basement space and there isn't enough space for us. We were lucky to get that corner for the AFM. The optical traps are much bigger.
I've been analyzing data, since I'm behind on that anyway. :/
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Grummash
Member # 4289
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posted December 05, 2009 16:24
Xanthine - ok,you said no-none can help, and you said you just want to vent....but here is a small vibe of support, if it brings any comfort....
speak to your tutor/mentor/adviser...surely you have the right to work in peace?
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TheMoMan
Member # 1659
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posted December 05, 2009 16:37
____ POOP, There are anti-vibration pads for machines, yours and upstairs. How ever it also appears that your equipment needs Ear-muffs. There are electrical circuits that in effect nullify the noise, that is going to require a sound engineer to develop a sensor circuit that will be the inverse of the sound, it can be done but may be quite expensive.
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Ashitaka
Member # 4924
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posted December 06, 2009 00:11
there is always third shift (midnight to 8) ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
I worked as a third shift(midnight to 10 or noon) chemist five years ago. I always got all my work done plus 50% the work of anouther chemist working third shift. I was the only chemist in the labs on third shift out of 20 chemists.
I took naps, watched simpsons, and still got more work done than the day shift chemists just 'cause i was all alone and bored.
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Xanthine
Member # 736
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posted December 06, 2009 00:42
quote:
Originally posted by TheMoMan:
____ POOP, There are anti-vibration pads for machines, yours and upstairs. How ever it also appears that your equipment needs Ear-muffs. There are electrical circuits that in effect nullify the noise, that is going to require a sound engineer to develop a sensor circuit that will be the inverse of the sound, it can be done but may be quite expensive.
I'll have to look at exactly what they've got going on upstairs. My machine is, in essence, a glorified microscope. All the optical components (ie, the business end) are bolted onto a floating optical table (when I lean on it, it farts nitrogen) with pads and we have an active stabilization system for data collection as well. It works sort of like nose-cancelling headphones, but with lasers. However, when whatever it is gets going up there...*sigh*. It's a known problem. This is why it's usually considered beneficial to work on the weekend. For someone to be up there making that much of a racket on a Saturday is just...weird.
kreziserb was flabbergasted when I whined to him. He built his own parts in grad school (and sometimes machines stuff for his company, just because he can) and says the machines shouldn't be that loud. I think that whoever was up there today was doing something wild or something stupid. I heard heavy objects hitting the ground at one point.
People in the lab do take the third shift, Ashitaka. It's something we try to avoid for obvious reasons, but it has been done in the past and will be done in the future, but really, I shouldn't have to do that for these experiments. Really, it should be round about impossible to drown my signal in noise. Today, though, that happened.
I think the problem right now is, all the labs get a machine shop allowance to burn through each year. Use it or lose it and the year is ending. So everyone who didn't use up their shop allowance earlier this year is burning it up now.
Meh. Detecting movement on the nanometer scale is rough. Vibrations throw things off, changes in temperature throw things off, changes in laser intensities throw things off, air bubbles in the immersion oil are disasterous, and, oh by the way, if your oil's gone off or you aren't using just the right amount, things will be off. We never turn off the lights in the instrument lab. It changes the temperature so much we can pick it up in our data (as I discovered a few weeks back). And these are fluorescent lights too! When I first joined up, I thought my new labmates were just about the most anal-retentive people you could ever hope to meet. But they're not. They really aren't. It's just the experiments really are that sensitive.
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TheMoMan
Member # 1659
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posted December 06, 2009 02:33
____ Sooooooo, You have one hell of a seismograph?
____ That sucks really, Some time look at the lens on the Speedometer in your car. now think about the polish that we had to put into the mold that made that lens, same problem. We had a special building for lens mold polishing. Four foot thick concrete floor, temp control & humidity control we did not try to control Baro.
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littlefish
Member # 966
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posted December 06, 2009 05:32
I saw a TV programme the other day where they went to NPL (like NIST), where they make and store standards. They had an air table on another air table. I be that was pretty stable.
I hope the people upstairs have got whatever they were up to done.
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TheMoMan
Member # 1659
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posted December 06, 2009 06:29
____ Even air tables can conduct sound, poop.
____ However Xan. you have given me an idea on building a seismograph. Suspend a mirror from three threads, shine a laser at it and put a photomultiplier tube at the reflection, that should tell me if the ground is shaking. Thanks for the input.
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zorgon
Member # 546
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posted December 07, 2009 09:14
I work on ships, so I totally sympathize. I can't imagine a situation where an AFM would ever work on a ship, however ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
See if you can get the department to spring for a better vibration-isolation table. Kinda doubt that will help, though -- you should get them to move you. Good luck!
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Xanthine
Member # 736
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posted December 07, 2009 13:02
It would be nice if they'd let us move. Too bad we're sort of low on the totem pole. I suppose we should just feel lucky we have basement space. Everyone wants space in the basement because it is quieter. The special people even get space in the basement that's not under a machine shop.
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littlefish
Member # 966
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posted December 07, 2009 14:00
Wherever I've ver worked, the people with the most sensitive stuff get the basement - optical tweezers, very sensitive balances etc. I've never really had to deal with anything like that. I had a spectrometer that should have been able to routinely make a measurement, but kept failing because people looked like they might walk near it. (Step scan FTIR) It was a quick and dirty experiment, and if we realy wanted it to work we would have bought a proper table to sit it on. It was an an old wooden one. I'd still like to do step scan, but so does everyone with a posh FTIR. It's cool, but tricky.
And remember - it could be worse, you could be writing papers!
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The Famous Druid
Member # 1769
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posted December 07, 2009 14:21
quote:
Originally posted by Xanthine:
the top-tier physics institute...
...a Nobel laureate farm...
Too bad we're sort of low on the totem pole.
I see nothing's changed in academia. ![[ohwell]](graemlins/ohwell.gif)
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Xanthine
Member # 736
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posted December 07, 2009 15:36
TFD, the totem pole situation is both better and worse than you realize, but I'm not comfortable going into detail in an open forum. Our space for now is what it is. Most of the time, it's okay. But when they go at it hard, it's a bad place to be.
Supposedly, we're getting an addition or something built and maybe then we'll be able to move. Of course, moving has its own drawbacks because then we'll have to take everything apart and re-align all the optics and that'll just be painful.
quote:
Originally posted by littlefish:
And remember - it could be worse, you could be writing papers!
ROTFLMAO!! Noisy Saturday aside, I'm about halfway to a cute little paper.
Papers are the currency of science, but writing them is even worse than paying taxes.
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TheMoMan
Member # 1659
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posted December 09, 2009 02:13
_____ There is nothing worse than having to fight your equipment, just to get your job done. Xan from your description of the noises, some one was using a single point tool in a milling machine (fly cutter) at our shop using that tool could get you thirty days off.
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Xanthine
Member # 736
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posted December 09, 2009 09:51
This is academia so I don't know what the rules are or how they're enforced. I do know that this sort of crap happens in the after-hours when students and post-docs get on the machines. The pros are, well, pros. Presumably if you break something or do something very dangerous you'd lose your shop privileges, but it's just as likely people who misbehave up there simply get chewed out, and if you've ever spent more than a couple years in grad school, getting chewed out just sort of becomes one of life's little routines.
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