Synchrotron ring starts research use
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Delta Tau UK product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Apr 3, 2007
Supplying the motion control for the Diamond Light Source synchrotron ring project has been a challenge for Delta Tau, which reports it has now installed over 600 axes of motion at the project.
The Diamond Light Source synchrotron ring in Oxfordshire welcomed it first users in February this year.
Seven beamlines are now functional and more are on the way at this globally important research facility.
Supplying the motion control for the project has been a challenge for Delta Tau that reports it has now installed over 600 axes of motion at the project.
The Diamond Light Source is a new science facility - the largest to be built in the UK for over 30 years - housed in a doughnut-shaped building over half a kilometre in circumference, covering the size of five football pitches.
The light beams from this source are smaller than the width of a human hair and billions of times brighter than hospital x-rays.
At the heart of a synchrotron is its storage ring; a vacuum chamber through which electrons hurtle at nearly the speed of light.
As these electrons circle through specially designed magnets positioned around the ring, they lose energy, which emerges as beams of very bright, highly focused light of different wavelengths.
It is this light that scientists use to drive their experiments.
The light is directed to the beamlines and accelerated using bending magnets located at the insertion points around the storage ring.
Once the light enters the beamline, it is guided, intensified or de-intesified using a series of slits, lenses and crystals; the angles and positions of which are dictated using electric motors whose motion commands are generated by Delta Tau controls.
While most of the electric motors used are stepping types, there are also AC and brushed DC servomotors together with some piezo electric motors for fine adjustments.
The same Delta Tau motion controllers handle all these mixed motor technologies.
In addition to the beam adjustment mechanisms, there are workholding and manipulation tools whose motion is controlled.
These can include hexapod positioning stages whose six-axis motion control uses complicated inverse kinematics calculations carried out at breathtaking speed within the Delta Tau PMAC centralised controllers.
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