The large number of wires involved in the MEG CYLDCH (12 wires/cm2) and the stringent requirements on the precision of the wire position, better than 20 μm, imposes the use of an automatic system to operate all the wiring phases, as compared with the classical feed-through technique as wire anchoring system.
The wiring robot (see figure below) was designed and built at the INFN Lecce and University of Salento laboratories; it allow to manage a very large number of densely spaced wires, to check the solder quality of the wire to the supporting PCBs, to stretch the wires with the right mechanical tension (better than 0.2 g) and align it uniformly (within a few tens μm) trough the whole chamber.
In order to fulfill all these requirements, the wiring robot is made up of three systems:
- WIRING SYSTEM
- SOLDERING SYSTEM
- SOLDERING SYSTEM
A real-time system, based on a National Instrument CompactRIO platform, controls the three systems simultaneously, sequencing and synchronizing all the different operations.
The wiring robot is currently operational.