Highly automatic measurement system for three orthogonal magnetic moments of a permanent magnet block

Abstract

A highly automatic system with a three-angle rotation mechanism has been designed and constructed to measure several thousand permanent magnet blocks. The system's main features include its high speed, highly automatic measurement, and the ease with which the different size magnet blocks can be installed and removed. This system provides precise and accurate measurements of the three orthogonal magnetic moment components to accurately characterize each block, as deemed necessary to assess the field quality of undulators and wigglers. A three-angle in rotation mechanism, together with a simple mathematical algorithm is used to measure and analyze the magnetic moments of the magnet block. The system includes the Helmholtz coil pair, block holder, the three-degree rotation mechanism, and the control and data acquisition system. A power train system consists of one motor coupled with a nonmagnetic stainless steel for 360 degrees rotation and two motors individually coupled with two groups of nonmagnetic time belts for rotation angles of 0 degrees, 180 degrees, 0 degrees, and 90 degrees. The control system uses a microcomputer together with a stepping motor control card and a digital fluxmeter connected by the general purpose interface bus. The measurement speed of this system is 40 blocks per h. One reference magnet was measured, with those results verifying the long term precision of the order of 0.04% for the easy component and 0.02 degrees for two minor components. The coil-pair geometry factor is calibrated via the voltage-field reciprocity principle, indicating that the system absolute accuracy is around 0.43%. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.