Development of an Automated High Temperature Superconductor Coil Winding Machine at CERN

Within the framework of technology studies on future accelerators, CERN has initiated a five-years R&D; project aimed at the evaluation of the REBCO (Rare Earth Barium Copper Oxide) High Temperature Superconductors (HTS). The study covers a number of areas from material science to electromechanical properties. The REBCO high-field tape will be tested on different HTS magnet prototypes, such as HDMS (HTS Demonstrator Magnet for Space), GaToroid (hadron therapy Gantry based on a toroidal magnetic field) and other smaller coils that will be fabricated to study the tape’s potential. To assemble the HTS coils, a new automatic winding station has been designed and constructed at CERN. A touch panel combined with an embedded controller running software developed in-house provides a sophisticated, yet intuitive and user-friendly system aimed at maintaining perfect coil winding conditions. In this paper, we describe the mechanical choices and techniques used to control the seven HTS spool tapes and the winding machine. We also present the analysis of several coils already produced.