What Is a Cable-In-Conduit Winding Spool?
You've got to put all that cable somewhere, right?
By Amy Mast
The Magnet Lab's magnet-building team has a
way of customizing even the most straightforward
tools of its trade. Take this "cable-in-conduit
conductor" spool.
Research engineer Lee Marks demonstrates the spool's ability to hover
ever so slightly off the ground.
When superconducting cable-in-conduit is made,
the cable itself (pictured here) is squished into
a rectangular shape using a torturous-looking
device called a tube mill.
The cable is formed into this shape in one
long, continuous section, which presents some
logistical problems; namely, what one does with
more than a thousand unbroken yards of metal?
The answer: you wind it, very carefully, onto this
giant spool in the same way you'd take up thread
into a sewing machine.
The spool has to be supersized because winding
it around anything smaller could put unwanted
stress on the metal. Winding the cable is a time-consuming
process, with about four feet of cable
completed per minute. Though commercial
versions of this machine can go as fast as 1000 feet
per minute, the lab's span of cable-in-conduit may
represent as much as a million dollars' worth of
materials, so technicians use extreme care.
What don't you expect from a structure this size?
It floats. Air pads on the bottom of the spool
help technicians to move the loaded-up piece
of equipment from one area of the workspace
to another. This is also handy for making minute
adjustments during the coil take-up process.
The spool will be used for the eventual
replacement of the 45-tesla hybrid "A" coil.
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