The Electronics Department at NSCL

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Overview

NSCL Electronics department has considerable expertise in the design and operation of high power radio frequency systems, high performance power supplies, sensitive instrumentation, control of dynamic systems, large distributed supervisory control systems, and general circuit design. This group mastered difficult engineering challenges in bringing the variable energy K500 and K1200 cyclotrons on line and in coupling the two machines. Many of the systems attributed to this department's efforts have been key to stable, reliable, and repeatable NSCL operations.
The department is responsible for the architecture, design, development, implementation, and maintenance for all of the laboratory electronic systems associated with the accelerators and beam transport systems. The department also plays a key role in engineering large changes or additions to the laboratory electrical infrastructure.

Examples

Following are some examples of equipment and services supplied by the electronics department that are not generally available elsewhere and are now reliably operating at NSCL:

  • Large power supplies used to supply power to the radio frequency amplifiers that drive the cyclotron resonators. The largest of these delivers 1.2 megawatts, roughly equivalent to an engine delivering 1600 horsepower.
  • Precision power sources to energize superconducting magnets that are so efficient at regulating their output current that the magnets can maintain their field levels to within 5 parts in 1 million. These supplies have circuitry to protect the magnets and can both supply power to or remove power from the magnets.
  • Analysis processes and techniques that can predict the performance of complex shaped rf resonators to within a few percent. The advanced information available from these analyses is used to ensure the mechanical designs and cooling systems are up to the task—thereby building reliable machines the first time.
  • High power radio frequency amplifiers that reliably deliver more than 250 kilowatts, are tunable over a large frequency range (9–27 megahertz, and are stable into nearly any load from a open to short circuit.
  • Sensitive electronic instrumentation such as a current meter that can accurately read currents from 30 picoampere to 1 milliampere.
  • Implementation of the controls for a large cryogenic plant based on off-the-shelf industrial programmable logic controller (PLC) controls. The logic in this PLC contains about 40 closed loops to regulate this system.
  • A large supervisory control system that provides the ability to control and monitor all of the laboratory equipment associated with the accelerators and beam transport system from remote locations. This system also provides the logic to protect equipment from faulty conditions. The electronics department provides computer programs for the users of the equipment as well as program interfaces to other software development and front end systems.