Yesterday at 7:35 AM, parts of Nashua, Merrimack, Amherst, Hollis and Brookline lost power for about half an hour. The black out happened at a good time at work.
Actually "good time" is a misnomer, let's just say there could have been much worse times to happen - say at 10:00 AM. I was powering up one of the machines in order to grow a short, experimental run using sapphire doped with chromium. The machine was not completely powered up yet (purge/power up can take up to 3 1/2 hours), but I was getting close to the temperature in which I would let the melt "soak" in order to ensure a good mixture between the sapphire and chromium.
All of a sudden, everything went dark. I literaly ran to the machine to make sure the emergency water was circulating to cool off the machine (when it is at 2,000 C - a sudden stoppage of water circulation can really mess up the machine). The power came back on for a couple of seconds then went out again. This happened one more time before the power decided to stay off.
I was happy to find that the emergency water was circulating and I turned off the power supply so that it wouldn't surge when the power came back on. Then, with nothing else to do in the dark (emergency lighting was on, but it isn't very bright), I swept the floor.
By the time the power came back on, the machine was cool enough that powering up would have to start from scratch. So I decided to postpone the run until today.
If the power outage had occurred at 10 AM, I would have already seeded the die and started the run. Without being able to pull the run free, the die would have been toast. Instead, since the power outage occurred before seeding, so everything is in good shape.
I never did find out the reason for the power outage; I am hoping that the Nashua paper will have an article available on line, but that won't happen for a couple hours yet (they are still showing yesterday's edition). If they come out with an article, I will link to it later.
UPDATE: An opossum was apparently to blame.
Lucky you. That could have been a mess with what I've heard about the process. By the way, what's a comparator?
Posted by: Wichi Dude | October 01, 2003 at 12:39 PM
I should have clarified and said "optical" comparator. It is a surface illuminator used mainly to check features and measurements on small parts. Here is a picture.
Posted by: Bogie | October 01, 2003 at 05:21 PM
Whoa.....the 'possum LIVED!
Posted by: Buffy | October 01, 2003 at 07:17 PM
I had a hard time believing that too (we must breed them extra tough up here)!
Posted by: bogie | October 02, 2003 at 05:40 AM