Girders

Description

The European XFEL is a research facility of superlatives: It generates ultrashort X-ray flashes—27 000 times per second and with a brilliance that is a billion times higher than that of the best conventional X-ray radiation sources. To construct and operate the European XFEL, international partners agreed on the foundation of an independent research organization – the European XFEL GmbH (‘XFEL’), a non-profit limited liability company under German law. The company employs more than 300 people. XFEL needs a detector girder that will Support different types of 2D detectors for scientific experiments in the low photon energy regime at the SCS instrument. The key functionality is the motorized, horizontal long travel distance of the main detector, referred to DSSC. This movement is enabled via a sleigh for which the remaining degrees of motion are implemented and motorized. The detector girder consists of 5 parts: The first part is a 3 meters long stationary main module which supports the supply lines for media and cables for the detector. The second part is a 2 meters long extension module which can be optionally installed upstream of the main module depending on the experiment configuration. In some cases, a short extension unit of the main and extension modules is needed as a third removable component. On top of the main and the extension modules a long translation stage can be manually moved along the beam direction. This long translation stage of about 3 meters in length has further a motorized linear stage which allows for moving the detector during experiments along the beam direction. Finally, a fully motorized sleigh with four degrees of motion for fine alignment forms a generic interface to the detector housings and directly supports the main detector. A drag chain must also be integrated to the main module in order to safely guide all media supplies as well as data acquisition and motor cabling during the movements. For the different detector-girder configurations a set of necessary flight tubes and bellows must be delivered in addition. The scope of work is the fabrication of the detector girder (GRD) for the SCS instrument including: — detailed design and fabrication of the base structure, an extension base structure as well a short extension, and a horizontal long translation stage according to the technical design specifications, — detailed design and fabrication of a fully motorized detector sleigh with four degrees of motion according to the technical specifications, — implementation of a drag line with a length of approximately 6 meters, — all motion hardware (motors, bearings, gearing, etc.) and cabling up to a connection box attached to the base structure, — Finite Element Analysis (FEA) study or an analytical force calculation of the girder components must be performed to document structural integrity. Here, in particular, vacuum forces on the large diameters vacuum flanges have to be taken into account, — design and fabrication of 2 configurations for the flight tube and bellows, — full documentation including instruction manual, technical and electrical drawings, risk assessments and welding certificates, — delivery of all components to European XFEL, Schenefeld, Germany, — installation of deliverables at European XFEL (with support from XFEL groups).