Work in the Laboratory

ISOLDE Beamline

ISOLDE beamline is used for collecting different radioactive samples. In Gamma MRI, it is used to collect xenon isomers in a thin foil, which is then heated to release the gas and enclose it in a small vial used for transport.

Mechanical Components and Adapters

In addition to the main system elements, building a complex prototype, like GAMMA-MRI is, requires a lot of small components and adaptors that most of the time are fungible and need to be replaced with minor modifications after some testing.

Rather than waiting weeks or months to receive those components from an external workshop and bear the high cost, we have decided to produce the needed components ourselves using printing machines. This approach is ideal since it offers much lower cost, faster construction times and, most importantly, has allowed us the flexibility to do modifications on the fly and keep pace with the research work. No more delays, no more limitations to correct errors and make minor modifications. Printing machines have been used mainly to build some components of the magnet, the placeholders of the detectors, the oven, etc.

Machine Printed Elements

In the pictures below it is shown some of the components we have machine printed for work in the laboratory and also for integration into the prototype.

On the left we can see one of the elements of the oven. Initially the oven was developed using ceramic materials. However, this design proved to be very fragile, was difficult to modify and repair and presented some heat leaks which could damage the magnet. The oven has been re-designed using heat resistant resin suitable for our 3D printers and we also took the opportunity to integrate the cooling system into oven itself.

On the right we show one of the detector cages built using machine printing.

Custom Made NRM

To facilitate work at the laboratory, we have developed a custom made NMR. In the picture below it can be seen the electronics board and filters of the NRM inside its Faraday cage.