R. Leib's Blog: Dream State - Posts Tagged "cyclotron"

When I was in college (I think it was in the early Pleistocene), I worked as an electrical assembler on a 160 ton cyclotron being built by the physics department. It spanned two floors of a seven story building. To allow for the placing of the D's (large brass components shaped like arrows), four of us lifted the 80 ton top half of the magnet using hand-pumped hydraulic jacks. It took us an hour and a half to get it up about a foot. There were gates wired to a safety system on every floor. If a gate was open, the cyclotron could not be activated. We all wore photographic exposure badges that were developed every Friday to see if we had been exposed to too much radiation. Magnetic switching units routed the stream of particles to various experimentation rooms. These were really big. The six-inch thick steel double doors for the largest room were delivered already mounted in their frame. We had to weld them shut, because a visitor was almost crushed, when he tried to pull one of the doors open. Without being set in the wall, opening one of the doors would shift the center of gravity for the whole assembly causing it to fall forward. Since it weighed a ton or two, this would be bad. Most of what I did was point-to-point assembly of control circuitry. I was good at soldering, paid attention to details, and validated my work. We lost a good portion of the control circuitry and all the hair off the side of my boss's head, when the 12 volt control line was accidentally crossed with the high amperage D current. I never saw the cyclotron in action. When all the control circuits were completed, my job was done.