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Topic: Your today in pictures..
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted August 17, 2016 01:03 PM
So, It’s Maintenance Day here out on the Frontiers of Science,
-and I’m looking for trouble!
This doesn’t mean I plan on walking into a biker bar and ordering a drink with an umbrella in it or leaving the seat up late at night: I am literally looking for things going wrong so they can be dealt with before very expensive equipment gets damaged and days (sometimes weeks) are lost in repairs.
I work at a very recently built synchrotron light source. It’s one of those huge machines that shoots a particle beam around a circle for scientific research. (If it was Starbucks and The Gap instead of scientists and equipment, it would be about the size of a middling shopping mall.) My machine isn’t one of those that crashes protons into each other trying to discover the origins of the Universe. That one is actually about a mile away. Mine makes really high power, finely focused X-rays so material scientists can look at semiconductor crystals for integrated circuits and solar panels and medical researchers can see viruses swimming around inside living cells and see DNA up close and personal.
There aren’t many facilities like this in the world. The chance to use it brings people from all over the globe and they can be working at any hour of the day or night to have their turn at it. If the beam goes down halfway through their shot at getting a Nobel Prize, they get really, really upset!
-so every couple of months we have planned shutdowns, to do new construction, to install upgrades, and most of all to prevent unplanned shutdowns.
This week I’ve been doing thermal imaging on beam magnets.
This is what the one out in the lobby (for tour groups) looks like:
The stainless steel pipe with the electron beam inside goes through the hole in middle. Each beam magnet has a power supply powering all those electromagnet coils and the magnetic field squishes the beam just enough to keep it focused. There are something close to a thousand magnets of various flavors around our half-mile ring, each doing its specialized job. It is all operated by a central computerized controller. It actually (sort-of) worked the first day they tried it, which will never cease to amaze me! (It’s my first ray-gun…)
My job this week has been to walk around the huge concrete tube this lives inside with a thermal camera and look for magnets that are overheating. (They actually turn the beam OFF first...)
I CAUGHT one yesterday!
-NOT cool!
The cooling water to the bottom coils was blocked, and the top coils got all the flow (see it?)
That’s what’s great about this technology: not only can you tell something isn’t right, you can even start to understand why.
So the guy from the water group will come by and clear tubing and readjust flows and maybe one day you’ll have a better cell phone a few days sooner than otherwise because somebody had better semiconductors to work with.
(You’re welcome!) [ August 17, 2016, 09:14 PM: Message edited by: Steve Klare ]
-------------------- All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted August 20, 2016 10:54 PM
Well, We’re on vacation!
Where did we go? Actually, we kind of didn’t!
-Let me explain!
Something a great many people from New York share in common is we go everywhere else but New York. I’ve been to Red Square, I’ve been to Vienna, I’ve been across the Golden Gate Bridge and down Lombard Street. I’ve been to the Hofbrau House twice, and had a great time too! Given the beer they have there in the volume it’s served in I can’t remember a lot about it…but I’ve been!
New York was there long before I was born and has been there my whole life! Anytime I get around to it, it will be waiting, so what’s the hurry?! -so as a result it’s something a lot of us never get around to doing.
So this time around we decided to keep local and do what the tourists do!
Today was a full circumnavigation of Manhattan Island aboard the Circle Line.
We headed South in the Hudson River and passed by Ellis Island.
Like a great many Americans, I am descended from people who first stepped on American soil here. My grandfather stepped off the boat here in 1927. Knowing the man as I do it seems someone was asleep at the switch that day!
(I KID, I KID!!!...he probably just ducked under the rope!)
I of course haven't ever been there!
As it has basically since the last Ice Age, the Staten Island Ferry eternally heads back and forth! It's the least nautical looking vessel ever take to the waves: kind of an immense subway car with a propeller!
-and of course we passed by this lady. Typical of folks from ‘round these parts, this is as close as I’ve ever gotten! Maybe someday when somebody visits from out of town I’ll actually get there!
Soon we passed the southern tip of Manhattan and turned north into the East River.
My native Long Island is to the right, and Manhattan is to the left.
We still have a long way to go, and we will continue!
-------------------- All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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