Controls

1. Beamline Component Labeling Convention

Beamline components at the NSCL have 10-character labels in the following system:

• the first character gives the beamline branch,
• the next three digits give the position in feet east of ‘000’ (the dividing wall between the K1200 vault and the A1900 Hall),
• the last two characters give an abbreviated device description.

The Table 1 gives the beamline branches from the K1200 cyclotron and Table 2 lists some common device labels. Some examples: Z041QB is the second quadrupole magnet in one of the doublets in the A1900; A066WP is the wall plug between the A1900 Hall and the Transfer Hall; and B133GV is the high-vacuum gate valve in the N2 Vault isolating the 4p Array from the beamline.

Table 1: K1200 Beamline Branch Labels

Table 2: Beamline Device Abbreviations

Magnets

DS — Dipole, Steering/Switching

DH — Dipole, Horizontal Correction

DV — Dipole, Vertical Correction

QS — Quadrupole, singled

QA — Quadrupole, First in Doublet or Triplet

QB — Quadrupole, Second in Doublet or Triplet

QC — Quadrupole, Third in Triplet

SX — Sextupole

Beam Diagnostics

AP — Aperture Plate

FC — Faraday Cup

SC — Scintillator

General

GV — Gate Valve

WP — Wall Plug

Control of Accelerator and Beamline Devices

Data acquisition and control of accelerator and beamline devices is provided by multiple nodes of VME-bus-based hardware and PLC-based (Programmable Logic Controller) based hardware. The hardware level control is generally 0 - +/- 10 VDC for the continuous variables and 24 VDC for the discrete variables. The continuous variables are generally scaled to engineering units for the user. These nodes are tied to each other and to the user interface console computers via an optically isolated 100 Mbit Ethernet network. Generally the VME bus based hardware provides for control of the continuous variables (such as magnet current) whereas the PLC-based hardware provides for state control and interlock conditions (such as power supply on/off, or water flow). The console equipment consists of standard PC-based hardware. EPICS software provides for the VME based equipment management and for the general network protocols. Approximately 9500 control points are PLC-based and 7000 controls points are VME-based.

… VME stations

… PC Console Computers ( Custom Software, Labview, EPICS MMI, DDE, etc.)

… Sun Workstations (EPICS boot nodes and X-Windows application servers)

… PLC Hardware

Software Interfaces

… NSCL Written Applications (PC Panel Mate, Chart Recorder, Knob/Meter App, Alarm Servers, DDE Servers, NCS Active X, Cyclotron Magnet Control)

N4 Vault

PC Panel Mate file