working on grounding electrical system

I met with Casey and Peter last week to go over our electrical setup. Peter recommended some changes in how we make electrical ground connections, I did this yesterday. He also suggested smoothing our sample to reduce arcing as we were getting a higher stable field with out a sample present. This is likely due to the field enhancement on the sharp edge of our sample.
I just talked with John Nees about the controller and it sounds like a National Instruments USB controller will be suitable. We need two, one for each mirror, at $100 each. I will confirm the exact model with John and Peter then place the order.

Capacitor and Galvos

I stopped the capacitor from arcing across the edges. Now the sample area is where it arcs. It seemed to be localized to one area and I will try to smooth it further to get a higher field. Currently a 1.8MV/m is fairly stable.
I met with Peter and we have discussed how the mirrors are controlled and how to implement controls similar to what we use already for the stage. The next step is going to be creating a test setup and installing the software on one of the computers.

Galvos and Capacitor

I got in touch with Peter Diehr as he has worked with the galvanometric mirrors previously with McClain. We should be able to meet later this week to talk about getting them working. Last I talked to John Nees he is still looking for the card that interfaces with the computer. As long as it can be found soon this should not be too much a problem as I have to read the instructions on all the components.
I have tested the capacitor and the first part to arc is the sides and not across where the sample is. I want to try and insulate this area or adjust the setup in some way to try and get a higher electric field across the sample area.

Back from Break

I talked to Ryan yesterday about making an improved setup for running experiments in water based on a paper Abere found. Ryan has also mentioned that I may be able to help him with finding and programming some galvanometric mirrors to give us more control over the beam.