ELETTRA, Basovizza, Italy
Detecting and locating faults and malfunctions of an accelerator is a difficult and time consuming task. The situation is even more difficult during the commissioning phase of a new accelerator, when physicists and operators are still acquiring confidence with the plant. On the other hand a fault free machine does not imply that it is ready to run: the definition of "readiness" depends on what is the expected behavior of the plant. In the case of FERMI@Elettra, in which the electron beam goes to different branches of the machine depending on the programmed activity, the configuration of the plant determines the rules for understanding whether the activity can be carried out or not. In order to help the above task and display the global status of the plant, a tool known as the "matrix" has been developed. It is composed of a graphical front-end, which displays a synthetic view of the plant status grouped by subsystem and location along the accelerator, and by a back-end made of Tango servers which reads the status of the machine devices via the control system and calculates the rules. The back-end also includes a set of objects known as "sequencers" that perform complex actions automatically for actively switching from one accelerator configuration to another.
ELETTRA, Basovizza, Italy
ELETTRA, Basovizza, Italy
FERMI@Elettra is a new 4th-generation light source based on a seeded Free Electron Laser (FEL) presently under commissioning in Trieste, Italy. It is the first seeded FEL in the world designed to produce fundamental output wavelength down to 4 nm with High Gain Harmonic Generation (HGHG). Unlike storage ring based synchrotron light sources that are well known machines, the commissioning of a new-concept FEL is a complex and time consuming process consisting in thorough testing, understanding and optimization, in which a reliable and powerful control system is mandatory. In particular, integrated shot-by-shot beam manipulation capabilities and easy to use high level applications are crucial to allow an effective and smooth machine commissioning. The paper reports the status of the control system and the experience gained in two years of alternating construction and commissioning phases.
