2000 SNEAP REPORT
Reporting period October 2001 thru October 2002
Tom J. Gray and Robert D. Krause
James R. Macdonald Laboratory
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-2604
This report covers a period from October 2001 through October 2002 for the James R. Macdonald laboratory at Kansas State University. The EN tandem Van de Graaff accelerator has operated extremely well through this reporting period.
There were two tandem openings: one was scheduled and the other was unexpected. The scheduled opening was to check on the operation of the Alcatel terminal turbo pump. The unexpected opening was due to a low energy charging chain failure. We found after opening the tandem that the low energy drive pulley pillar block bearings were bad. The inside bearing (column side) was the worst one. This caused the pendulum housing to shake so intensely that it broke the charging inductor electrical connection from the resistor, thus not allowing charge to be put on the chain.
During this reporting period the tandem logged 1563.0 hours of actual beam time operation. The total amount of down time was approximately 192.0 hours.
Our increasing problem with aging laboratory equipment, for which there are no longer available parts, has been an ongoing problem for years. During this period we were able to replace a very old High Voltage Engineering Corporation 12kw 90-degree magnet supply with a new Danfyisk power supply.
The EN tandem Van de Graaff accelerator is injected by two different ion sources. The Middleton high intensity sputter source operates 90% of the time, and the diode ion source is used the remaining 10% of the time. The diode source is used to produce primarily hydrogen. The Middleton high intensity sputter source is again the workhorse in the laboratory, used to produce beams of boron, carbon, fluorine, magnesium, silicon, chlorine, copper, iodine and oxygen. We plan to replace the 20-degree inflection magnet power supply next year. The present High Voltage Engineering Corporation supply is 30 years old and difficult to maintain.
The laboratory brought online a high power femto-second titanium sapphire laser system this last year for interaction studies in various target systems. The laser lab was built in one of our experimental beam areas. Several laser transport lines deliver the laser beams to the LINAC area, ECR source area and to other stand-alone experiment stations. LINAC operations have been scaled back due to lower interest in particle beam interactions.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the Division of Chemical Sciences, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Energy Research, U.S. Department of Energy.
