LAL, Orsay, France
Couplers are technological devices that permit RF power matching between RF source and cavities. An high cleaning quality requirement especially for the coupler cold part directly linked to the cavity is needed. Even if the actual coupler preparation procedure at LAL works well, we have contamination risks due to the handling, no repeatability and a too long time duration (5days) which is not acceptable for machines like ILC where around 16000 couplers would be prepared. Our challenge is to suppress these weak points, in designing an automatic coupler cleaning machine which give us a lower contamination risk, a full repeatability of the cleaning and only 3 hours of process.
