An Automated Beam Extraction System for Microtron

AbstractIn this paper we report on a computer based system developed for the automated control of the Beam Extraction System (BES) of Microtron (electron accelerator facility at Mangalore University). The BES helps in extracting the electron beam from a desired orbit. The automated system is designed with two levels. At the system level, there is a microcontroller along with some circuit components to place the mouth of the extraction channel at a particular orbit so that an electron beam of a particular energy can be extracted from the microtron for experimental studies. The computer kept in the control room away from the microtron machine (i.e. user level) passes the orbit number from which the beam is to be extracted to the microcontroller. This automated system is very simple, easy to operate and cost effective. It also helps in accurate setting of extraction channel and extraction of electron beam of desired energy. The work described here is an attempt to improvise on the existing system and compute...