Diagnostics and camera strobe timers for hydrogen pellet injectors

Hydrogen pellet injectors have been used to fuel fusion experimental devices for the last decade. As part of developments to improve pellet production and velocity, various diagnostic devices were implemented, ranging from witness plates to microwave mass meters to high speed photography. This paper will discuss details of the various implementations of light sources, cameras, synchronizing electronics and other diagnostic systems developed at Oak Ridge for the Tritium Proof-of-Principle (TPOP) experiment at the Los Alamos National Laboratory's Tritium System Test Assembly (TSTA), a system built for the Oak Ridge Advanced Toroidal Facility (ATF), and the Tritium Pellet Injector (TPI) built for the Princeton Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR). Although a number of diagnostic systems were implemented on each pellet injector, the emphasis here will be on the development of a synchronization system for high-speed photography using pulsed light sources, standard video cameras, and video recorders. This system enabled near real-time visualization of the pellet shape, size and flight trajectory over a wide range of pellet speeds and at one or two positions along the flight path. Additionally, the system provides synchronization pulses to the data system for pseudo points along the flight path, such as the estimated plasma edge. This was accomplished using an electronic system that took the time measured between sets of light gates, and generated proportionally delayed triggers for light source strobes and pseudo points. Systems were built with two camera stations, one located after the end of the barrel, and a second camera located closer to the main reactor vessel wall. Two or three light gates were used to sense pellet velocity and various spacings were implemented on the three experiments. Both analog and digital schemes were examined for implementing the delay system. A digital technique was chosen