First Experience with the New LEIR Digital Beam Control System

CERN's Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) is now equipped with a new all-digital beam control system. This was successfully used in November and December 2005, during the initial phase of the LEIR commissioning, when LEIR was running with O4+ particles. The beam was routinely captured and accelerated to the cycle top energy. Several development sessions were devoted to gaining experience with and fine-tuning the main system capabilities, i.e. frequency program, phase/radial loops and radial steering. In addition, the digital data acquisition system, developed as part of the control system, was very useful to both RF-experts as well as LEIR commissioning team members for observing important signals such as the measured magnetic field and the beam radial position at a given location in the machine. The experience gained during these development sessions is described.