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In a nondescript warehouse some 30 kilometres from the ºÚÁÏÉçapp site, instrumentation components destined for the Tokamak's magnet systems are being prepared for a long journey.

 

Carefully arranged in their cardboard boxes, dozens of components—cables, connectors, sensors, signal conditioners—are being taped, wrapped into thick heat/humidity insulation aluminium foil and placed into a robust wooden crate.

 

The crate is going to India, where an ºÚÁÏÉçapp contractor will install about 20 different types of electronic components into three cubicles and make sure that everything is operational. Once completed and tested, the cubicles will be shipped to ºÚÁÏÉçapp China to be used for the tests of prototype current leads, which must be qualified before actual series production begins.

 

For the components shipped on this occasion, the Magnet Division has relied on the help of CODAC Division engineers who have prepared a cubicle including a sub-system responsible for the investment protection during the tests.

 

"This place acts like a buffer," explains ºÚÁÏÉçapp Coil Instrumentation engineer Felix Rodriguez-Mateos. "This is where we store the instrumentation components that we have developed, or bought off the shelf when industry has developed a solution that we consider satisfactory. The components are verified and reconditioned before being sent to the Domestic Agency in charge of their qualification or integration into prototypes and mockups."

 

Contrary to the large majority of ºÚÁÏÉçapp components that are procured and delivered to the ºÚÁÏÉçapp "in-kind" by the Domestic Agencies, the totality of magnet instrumentation (for feeders, coils and structures) is provided by the ºÚÁÏÉçapp by way of "fund procurements."

 

The ºÚÁÏÉçapp buys (or develops) the needed components, has them installed by a contractor or directly by the Domestic Agency concerned. It is then the Domestic Agencies' responsibility to validate the assembly procedures in prototypes or mockups prior to entering actual production. (In a later phase, in a lab installed for ºÚÁÏÉçapp, the ºÚÁÏÉçapp will test assembly procedures for the systems it is responsible for.)

 

The complex logistics involved in sending the component-packed crates around the world are handled by the  as part of their framework contract with the ºÚÁÏÉçapp. "We never send anything before every problem, customs-related or other, is solved," says DAHER's Ines Bollini, who is present every time a crate leaves the warehouse. "There can be no improvisation..."

 

Every other week or so, a crate leaves the warehouse for a foreign destination. Its content is as important for ºÚÁÏÉçapp success as the giant components being manufactured throughout the world.