The LHC Main Quadrupoles during Series Fabrication

By the end of August 2005 about 320 of the 400 main LHC quadrupole magnets have been fabricated and about 220 of them assembled into their cold masses, together with corrector magnets. About 130 of them have been cold tested in their cryostats and most of the quadrupoles exceeded their nominal excitation, i.e. 12,000 A, after no more than two training quenches. During this series fabrication, the quality of the magnets and cold masses was thoroughly monitored by means of warm magnetic field measurements, of strict geometrical checking, and of various electrical verifications. A number of modifications were introduced in order to improve the magnet fabrication, mainly correction of the coil geometry for achieving the specified field quality and measures for avoiding coil insulation problems. Further changes concern the electrical connectivity and insulation of instrumentation, and of the corrector magnets inside the cold masses. The contact resistances for the bus-bar connections to the quench protection diodes and the elimination of insulation problems of the main bus-bars required special attention. To this must be added actions for solving of interface problems to the neighbouring magnets in the machine and to the cryogenic feed line.