Growth of the IUCF Control System

The IUCF control system has grown steadily during the first two years of operation. All RF devices and power supplies are almost entirely under computer control so that cyclotron operation is approaching a one man/one chair state. A variety of different areas have seen active development:from sophisticated magnetic field controls to transient suppression in logic power supplies. Analog and digital data isolation for the new 800 kV preinjector is provided by an optical fiber data transmission link utilizing a V/F-F/V conversion scheme. The wide range of beam currents used at IUCF necessitates the use of stable, reliable logarithmic amplifiers and a special antilog routine for the control computer which is both accurate and fast. Energy and particle changes are simplified by using programs to predict appropriate cyclotron operating parameters and to correctly scale older device settings for new beams. Finally, microprocessor systems are being developed to decrease the constantly growing responsibility of the heavily burdened control computer.