Vacuum Actuator and Controller Design for a Fast Wire Scanner

To cope with increasing requirements in terms of accuracy and beam intensity limits a beam wire scanner (BWS) design is under development for the CERN accelerators complex. The main parameters have been determined; the wire speed should be 20 m·s -1 when interacting with the beam and a beam width determination accuracy of 2µm under the harsh radioactive environment should be reached. To meet this goal, the proposed solution locates all moveable parts of the actuator and the angular sensors in the beam vacuum pipe in order to reduce the friction and to allow a direct position measurement. One absolute positioning sensor will be used for the brushless motor feedback and one custom, high precision incremental design will target the beam size determination. The laboratory tests set up for the actuator and the incremental sensor will be presented along with the motor control feedback loops developed with the DSpace environment using Simulink and MatLab tools. Finally, the development of the digital feedback platform and the control and acquisition system design for the future operational system will be introduced.