- #1
Fred_Schimmel
- 0
- 7
- How did you find PF?
- By accident in the score of a Google search
I am a retired engineer that still is interested in physics, mechanics, programming, designing, experimenting, prefering the cases where these disciplines are closely related.
I worked my whole life at the same institute in the Netherlands, but over time in different functions. I started with the development of the production of the isotope Iodine-123 for medical diagnosis at lower radiation levels, compared to the standard Iodine-131, produced in a reactor. Later I was involved in the setup of an experimental area for the radio-chemical department as part of the 200m long, 300MeV electron accelerator MEA in Amsterdam. This included alignment of components, cooling, vacuum, remote control of equipment, etc. From there the accent shifted towards computer control of equipment, ending in harmonizing the controls for the whole accelerator and experimental area's, plus a rebuild of the central console from where the whole accelerator could be controlled.
After MEA had been shut down, my work shifted to participation in projects to develop and build sub-systems for huge experiments, located in underground bunkers of CERN near Geneva, Switserland. One of these projects concerned building a crogenic system to study systems at 1.8K with superfluid Helium as coolant. Later I became involved in the development and realization of controls for four systems with the liquid Nitrogen as coolant (-196'C), to improve the vacuum in the 3km long arms of the Gravitational Wave Detector VIRGO in Cascina near Pisa, Italy.
And finally I have designed and build a production setup that automated the positioning of Hamamatsu optical sensor chips in rows with <10um precision in X and Y. After aligned and verified, the chips were glued to titanium cooling bars with alignment slits, that allowed acurate positioning in the final construction. That machine has produced more than 270 cooling bars, each with 16 sensor chips.
Nowadays I have the time to "work" on private projects that had caught my attention. One was the rebuild of a pneumatic dummy launcher for the training of gundogs, followed by an attempt to do the same, but powered by a multi-stage coil-gun. The gun is build, but never tried because the required investment in super-capacitors. And the last two years I work on a challenging project that should be cheap and able to measure mechanical displacements contactless over a range of ~14mm with nano-meter precision. The principle is simple: a beam of light is projected on a one-dimensional array of CCD pixels. The displacement is concluded by careful analysis of the center of the pulse on the CCD array.
At this moment my setup can read relative positions every 15ms with a standard deviation of ~40nm in the last 100 measurements. During my web search for better light sources and beam control I came accross the site of 'www.physicsforums.com', which caught my attention.
I worked my whole life at the same institute in the Netherlands, but over time in different functions. I started with the development of the production of the isotope Iodine-123 for medical diagnosis at lower radiation levels, compared to the standard Iodine-131, produced in a reactor. Later I was involved in the setup of an experimental area for the radio-chemical department as part of the 200m long, 300MeV electron accelerator MEA in Amsterdam. This included alignment of components, cooling, vacuum, remote control of equipment, etc. From there the accent shifted towards computer control of equipment, ending in harmonizing the controls for the whole accelerator and experimental area's, plus a rebuild of the central console from where the whole accelerator could be controlled.
After MEA had been shut down, my work shifted to participation in projects to develop and build sub-systems for huge experiments, located in underground bunkers of CERN near Geneva, Switserland. One of these projects concerned building a crogenic system to study systems at 1.8K with superfluid Helium as coolant. Later I became involved in the development and realization of controls for four systems with the liquid Nitrogen as coolant (-196'C), to improve the vacuum in the 3km long arms of the Gravitational Wave Detector VIRGO in Cascina near Pisa, Italy.
And finally I have designed and build a production setup that automated the positioning of Hamamatsu optical sensor chips in rows with <10um precision in X and Y. After aligned and verified, the chips were glued to titanium cooling bars with alignment slits, that allowed acurate positioning in the final construction. That machine has produced more than 270 cooling bars, each with 16 sensor chips.
Nowadays I have the time to "work" on private projects that had caught my attention. One was the rebuild of a pneumatic dummy launcher for the training of gundogs, followed by an attempt to do the same, but powered by a multi-stage coil-gun. The gun is build, but never tried because the required investment in super-capacitors. And the last two years I work on a challenging project that should be cheap and able to measure mechanical displacements contactless over a range of ~14mm with nano-meter precision. The principle is simple: a beam of light is projected on a one-dimensional array of CCD pixels. The displacement is concluded by careful analysis of the center of the pulse on the CCD array.
At this moment my setup can read relative positions every 15ms with a standard deviation of ~40nm in the last 100 measurements. During my web search for better light sources and beam control I came accross the site of 'www.physicsforums.com', which caught my attention.
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