High School Research at Jefferson Lab

Continuous Monitoring of Cryomodules in Production

The SRF Operations Department of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has been working on building cryomodules for the Stanford Linac Coherent Light Source upgrade (LCLS2). In the Test Lab, the SRF Operations Department builds cryomodules from the inside cavity to fully developed cryomodules that are ready to be shipped to LCLS2. In the cryomodules, there are cavities that must be concealed in a vacuum and kept at a temperature of 2 Kelvin. The vacuums and temperature in the cryomodules must be monitored continuously while in production. Before, they were monitored by mechanical technicians but now the technicians want a device to monitor the vacuums continuously. The mechanical technicians needs a device to collect data continuously, alarms when data goes out of range, and represent data via web interface. At this current time, mechanical technicians have no instrumentation for them to monitor cryomodules independently without relying on a Test and Measurement group and have nowhere to store data permanently. To solve this problem for mechanical technicians, there is a hardware and software interface. The hardware interface is an Automation Direct Terminator IO connected to vacuum and temperature sensors instrumented on each cryomodules. The Terminator IO consists of a power supply, an Ethernet Slave, a 14-bit analog voltage input module, and a thermocouple input module. This hardware was chosen for its affordability compared to other hardware and it doesn't require a laptop or a desktop computer to monitor the data. The software interface is the existing Canary Labs Data Historian, Trend Link, Trend Web, and Top View. This software stores data permanently, allows alarms to be configured, easily works with the Terminator IO, and will allow technicians to view data form a web interface. This hardware and software configuration allows for technicians to have automated continuous monitoring of cryomodules and to be contacted when cryomodules go out of range for the vacuum or temperature. Currently, the Terminator IO data logger is in the prototype phase. It will be installed and fully tested on the LCLS2 cryomodules.