Session GP1 - Poster Session IV.
POSTER session, Tuesday afternoon, October 30
Exhibit Hall B,
Major subsystems of the RSX experiment have been designed, built and brought on line by undergraduate students this year. We describe a relatively inexpensive magnet pulsed power system and a novel probe drive. We describe the engineering and construction of a 5kA, 700 Volt, critically damped, 30 msec pulse electrolytic capacitor bank and SCR switching network that drives the magnet coils. Failsafe design, ease of maintenance and operator safety were important factors. SPICE circuit simulations and performance data are compared. A novel axial probe drive that allows one probe to explore all of a cylindrical volume is described. This includes axial, angular and radial motion with high relative repeatability and absolute position accuracy. We opted for vacuum sanitary and plasma compatible position sensing technology with motion feedback to reduce the accuracy constraints on the probe movement mechanisms that remained inside the vacuum vessel. We show the first RSX data, which was taken to address the kink stability boundary of the single current channels we create with the RSX plasma guns.