Re: 250kV ION source control

[Steve Lewis <SALewis@llnl.gov>]

When the Front End of the Spallation Neutron Source was built, we had 
the same challenge, but 60kV instead of 250kV.  We solved it rather 
nicely with units from GMW Associates called "Group3". In particular, 
we found the "CNA" unit with 1 AO, 2 AI, 8 BI, 8 BO and some other 
nice attributes (such as diagnostics, filtering, etc) worked very 
well for a power supply.  (They have other units to control motors, 
etc, called "DI".)

Carl Lionberger at LBL <CALionberger@lbl.gov> did the drv and dev 
support for VxWorks.  The connecting fiber was quite cheap.  The 
ground end controller can be VME (our choice) as well as ISA, PCI, 
etc.

Contact either Brian Richter <brian@gmw.com> or Ian Walker 
<ian@gmw.com> and visit 
http://www.gmw.com/distributed_io/Group3Control/G3Control.html.


At 11:59 AM +0200 2007/11/14, Heinrich du Toit wrote:
> Hi there
>
> We have an Multi-sample ion source of negative ions by Ceium 
> sputtering for AMS application.
> The thing sits at 250kV's
> The Power Supplies also sits at 250kV's.
> We need to control these power supplies to control the ioc source.
>
> Now the 250kV makes for some problems.
>
> One solution would be to put a PC up at 250kV.. but then you have no 
> local control (unless you put yourself at 250kV somehow) but only 
> remote (ssh) access. And there is the danger that a spark or 
> something could easily kill the PC :(
>
> The other solution is to put the PC down at ground and then 
> communicate using some fiber-link.
> fiber-links are expensive so we would like to only use 1 of them for 
> all the power-supply units.
> So I was thinking maybe RS485 protocol.
>
> Maybe somebody did work on this type of problem already and have 
> something that could help us?
>
> thanks
> -Heinrich