Engineering of the AGS snake coil assembly

A 30% Snake superconducting magnet is proposed to maintain polarization in the AGS proton beam, the magnetic design of which is described elsewhere [R. Gupta, et al, "Magnetic design of a Superconducting AGS Snake," this conference]. The required helical coils for this magnet push the limits of the technology developed for the RHIC Snake coils. First, fields must be provided with differing pitch along the length of the magnet. To accomplish this, a new 3-D CAD system ("Pro/Engineer" from PTC), which uses parametric techniques to enable fast iterations, has been employed. Revised magnetic field calculations are then based on the output of the mechanical model. Changes are made in turn to the model on the basis of those field calculations. To ensure that accuracy is maintained, the final solid model is imported directly into the CNC machine programming software, rather than by the use of graphics translating software. Next, due to the large coil size and magnetic field, there was concern whether the structure could contain the coil forces. A finite element analysis was performed, using the 3-D model, to ensure that the stresses and deflections were acceptable. Finally, a method was developed using ultrasonic energy to improve conductor placement during coil winding, in an effort to minimize electrical shorts due to conductor misplacement, a problem that occurred in the RHIC helical coil program. Each of these activities represents a significant improvement in technology over that which was used previously for the RHIC snake coils.