Building the Rotating Source
Crossed Beams Apparatus
click on images for greater detail
Peter Willis
working on a Microstation
Drawing of the Rotating Source Assembly.
Roughly 200 drawings were prepared over a period of about 1 year.
A contract was made with the Kurt J.
Lesker Company to build the
rotating source and main chamber unit. Photo below shows the main
chamber (1200 lbs) on the vertical boring mill in Pittsburgh PA.
Wes Earnest
(left- project manager), reviews the progress of the operation.
Peter in foreground.
A closeup of the boring operation is shown below. Dimensional
tolerances
of the bore in the 2.5" thick stainless steel wall is critical, and
was maintained
to 32.000 +/- 0.003" to ensure proper vacuum seal to rotating
source unit.
Peter and Hans lowering the precisely machined rotating ring
into the 32" OD bore of main chamber. Sealing surfaces are
machined to mirror finish to facilitate rotary vacuum seal using
two spring-loaded teflon seals.
The detector and most of the additional components were
done by the
Physics machine shop here
at Cornell. The photo below shows the
1" thick stainless steel plate of the detector on the milling machine.
Plate is machined with keying surfaces to align into main chamber to
tolerances of 0.002"
Trial fit of the detector unit in the main chamber (below).
Nate on left; Jeff and Peter on right
Rotating source unit shown below with Brian, Peter and
Hans behind.
View is looking into molecular beam source.
The completed apparatus is shown below with Peter and
Ryan on the left.
A 157 nm excimer laser (upper right) is used for single photon ionization
of reaction products in the detector, located about 25 cm from the
collision region.
Below is a picture of Hans and Peter beside the machine.
Yes, those are
green leaves on the trees outside the window of our lab!
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