Beam development on the variable energy cyclotron at Calcutta

The VEC at Calcutta, with a K=140 is now operational. Internal beam currents of about 15 μA for 30 MeV alpha beams have been initially achieved. About 5 μA has been successfully extracted. Beam development and our initial experience in tuning and setting up the first internal and external beams are described. The methods used in calculating the control settings for a given beam, based on orbit calculations with the aid of computer codes and scaling laws are discussed. A comparison between the calculated settings and the optimized settings which produced beam show good agreement, indicating the utility of computer codes and scaling laws in generating the control settings for the various light and heavy ion beams to be accelerated in future on the VEC