Automated magnet testing facility

The automated Magnet Testing Facility (MTF) is a computer controlled, 60 kJ, parallel capacitor bank that was constructed to pulse test solenoidal magnets. Coil sets from different vendors are evaluated on two criteria: uniformity of field and coil reliability. The first criterion, uniformity of field, is evaluated by installing a pair of coils into stainless steel housings and pulse mapping the fields at a low energy level. Forty field-strength samples are easily collected with the one button operation of the MTF. Two thousand high field pulse tests, at a 20 kG level, is the second criterion for magnet acceptance. In a manually operated system a single operator can achieve this goal in six months. In a continuous operating mode, MTF can achieve the same goal in 42 days.