RFQ Vacuum brazing at CERN

The aim of this paper is to describe the vacuum brazing procedure used at CERN for the brazing of Radio Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ). The RFQ is made of high precision machined OFE copper pieces assembled together. Vacuum brazing is one of the most promising techniques used to join the individual components leading to vacuum tightness and high precision alignment. The RFQ modules brazed at CERN are made of four 100 or 120 cm long vanes (two major and two minor vanes). Our brazing procedure consists of two steps. The first step involves the brazing of the four vanes in a horizontal position. The second step consists of brazing the vacuum stainless steel flanges to the copper structure in a vertical position. The paper describes the problems encountered with the alignment and the vacuum tightness. The difficulties related to the stress relaxation of the machined copper pieces during the brazing heat treatment are discussed. In addition, the solutions developed to improve the alignment of the brazed RFQ’s are also presented.