As part of the European I.FAST project, members of IJCLab have contributed to the production of a copper accelerator component used to accelerate protons, a radiofrequency quadrupole (RFQ), in metal additive manufacturing (3D printing). This work was carried out in collaboration with partners from CERN, other European universities and laboratories (Riga, Milan) and industrialists (Trumpf, Fraunhofer IWS).
In this collaboration, IJCLab brings its skills in the application of metal additive manufacturing to particle accelerators, to globally understand the needs in terms of beam physics of the part to be produced, but also in terms of ultra-high vacuum and hyper-frequency. This RFQ will undergo vacuum tightness tests at IJCLab from mid-December then microwave tests during 2023.
IN2P3's support for the I3D-metal project carried out in Orsay made it possible to confirm the vacuum tightness of stainless steel tubes produced by additive manufacturing. Following this initial success, a more complex part was produced: a position monitor for a particle accelerator. This position monitor, successfully tested in a beam, had shown the validity of this manufacturing technique for particle accelerators. This process makes it possible to produce shapes closer to the specifications resulting from the simulations or to include cooling channels as close as possible to the points of heat deposition. Once the parts have been produced by additive manufacturing, re-machining in the laboratory's mechanical workshop is sometimes necessary in order to achieve the desired performance.
The field of additive manufacturing is still very open, with many unanswered questions: is this process compatible with the high microwave powers encountered in accelerating sections? Is it possible to make watertight crossings to output electrical signals? The “Additive Manufacturing Applied to Accelerators” (FA3) project at IJCLab tries to answer these questions, while the transverse group FATI leads discussions around additive manufacturing.
More information on I.FAST.