Beamline Control and Instrumentation System using Industrial Interface Techniques

How should a beamline be designed, which satisfies the needs and requirements of scientists and is easy to build and operate? Today, most control and instrumentation systems for beamlines are based on scientific requirements. Scientific details of the beamline, e.g. vacuum and beam physics details; are usually extensively described. However, control system specifications are often reduced to few requirements, e.g. which beam-related device to use. Lots of these systems work perfectly from the physicist's point of view, but are hard to bring into service and operate and difficult to extend with additional equipment. To overcome this, the engineering company ENZ has developed components using industrial standard interfaces to guarantee high flexibility for equipment extension. Using special interface boards and galvanic isolation offers increased stability of motion control axes. This saves resources during commissioning and service. A control system was developed and installed at a Soft-X-ray beamline at ASP Melbourne. It is operated under EPICs on distributed embedded IOC's based on PC-hardware. Motion and vacuum systems, measurement devices, e.g. a Low-Current Monitor (LoCuM) for beam position monitoring, and parts of the equipment protection system were developed and most of them tested in cooperation with DELTA at the Technical University of Dortmund.