Shipment of SESAME Magnet Power Supplies

After more than two years of intense work for FP7 CESSAMag WP5, the Magnet Power Supplies team is finalizing the shipment of the power supplies to SESAME. The equipment is expected to arrive at SESAME’s premises in January 2016, where it will be installed and fully integrated in the synchrotron system in the first quarter of the year. Commissioning will start before the end of 2016. CERN engineers are planning to visit the synchrotron for the installation and commissioning phase, to provide further support to the SESAME colleagues.

The collaboration between CERN and SESAME resulted in more than 140 power supplies being procured, assembled, tested and integrated in 22 fully equipped racks, including powering, ventilation, bus bar work, interlocks and electrical protection. Furthermore, 150 new electronic boards were designed, produced, tested and integrated and the 35 chassis designed. The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) provided about 160 control boards. While CERN participated in the hardware development, the software for the power supplies control system was entirely developed by SESAME. Only in a second phase, the firmware was tested and validated by the collaboration. This has allowed the SESAME team to develop an in-depth knowledge of the system, easing and simplifying future maintenance even further.

Delivering the power supplies went beyond the technical cooperation aspect: it was also an outstanding opportunity to further develop a tight  and friendly collaboration between CERN, SESAME and engineers from institutes in SESAME Member countries.  SESAME engineers regularly visited CERN to provide support and share experience. Long-term visits of two engineers from Iran (ILSF) and Turkey (TAEK) for 6 months and one year respectively came in support of the CERN team. Altogether, this allowed valuable exchange of knowledge, expertise and competencies in a Euro-Mediterranean framework.