Making Resistive Magnets

Stronger, Higher, Better

Not surprisingly when you consider all the pressure and current these magnets put up with, their lifespan is limited to about one and a half years. Then they are recycled – disassembled and rebuilt with the same devotion to detail as the original. Dozens of spare coils are inventoried at the lab, ready to replace a coil that's ready for retirement.

Diagram of one of the lab's planned
series connected hybrid magnets.

While magnet technicians build and rebuild coils for the lab's eight resistive magnets, scientists are busy planning, designing and proto-typing new multi-million dollar tools. Currently these experts are busy constructing special series connected hybrid magnets with a cone-like shape that will be used in our lab and other labs for neutron-scattering experiments. Also in the works is a split Florida helix magnet, which, when finished in 2010, will have the ability to direct and scatter laser light at the sample not only down the bore, or center, of the magnet, but also from four ports on the sides. Both of these magnets are projected to reach fields of 25 tesla and will be the most powerful tool of their kind on the planet. In this field, the push for stronger, higher and better is ever present.

"Any time there's a new facility available where you can do measurements that have never been done before, people discover new phenomena using them," explained MS&T Director Mark Bird. "There's always a great incentive to build a higher-performance system than has existed previously. So in the Magnet Science & Technology division, we're always trying to develop better ways of building magnets that will outperform the magnets that we've built in the past."

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Thanks to the Magnet Academy advisers for this story, MS&T Director Mark Bird and Resistive Magnet Shop supervisor Jim O'Reilly.