High School Research at Jefferson Lab

Vacuum Pressure Transducers

The vacuum in a particle accelerator is crucial in maintaining an air and dust free environment in which the beam can travel unobstructed. The vacuum helps keep the beam stable and focused. The vacuum ensures that the beam will not collide with gas molecules when on its way through the accelerator. Jefferson Lab uses vacuum pressure transducers to monitor the vacuum of each cavity in an accelerator. A basic program on LabVIEW was made to view the data from the transducers. However, there was a need for a fool-proof version in LabVIEW so that anyone could use it. My project is to use a LabVIEW template and modify for the Lab's needs. The LabVIEW will display the data on a graph and chart. The VI saves a file of the data every day at midnight and restarts the program to collect more data while running. This allows the user to go back and view old data. The midnight reset also makes sure that a continuous running LabVIEW graphs doesn't use up all of the computer RAM resources.