New technologies in superconducting cavity fabrication

Besides the progressive achievement of higher and higher accelerating fields, the drastic reduction in resonator production costs is compulsorily for the feasibility of building more and more powerful particle accelerators. If costly and time-consuming electron beam welds can be avoided, a significant saving in manufacturing costs can be achieved by seamless cavities produced by means of simple and cheap fabrication techniques. The paper reviews the status of those new forming techniques, such as hydroforming or spinning, under development in several laboratories and suitable for prototype fabrication and, at least in principle, applicable to mass scale production.