Series Production of Challenging Superconducting Magnets: The Experience of W7X Non Planar Coils and LHC Dipoles

By the end of 1998, Babcock Noell Nuclear (BNN) as part of the Consortium Wendelstein was awarded with the fabrication of the nonplanar module field coils for the Wendelstein 7-X experiment to be built at Greifswald. In 1999 and 2002, BNN received orders for the production of LHC dipoles to be installed at CERN. Both projects are performed in parallel; therefore challenging tasks had to be solved not only from a technical but also from an industrial point of view. We present the solutions we found for the set-up of the production facilities, which include the development of tools suitable for series production and the recruitment of capable staff. An overview of the different production steps for both magnet types will be given as well as an outline about the quality measures that has been established. As in total 416 dipoles and 50 nonplanar coils consisting of a lot of high-quality components are fabricated, logistics within the company and the consortial partners as well as to subsuppliers is an issue, too. Both types of magnets are on the forefront of what is technically feasible. Therefore feedback from test results and possible improvements of the fabrication processes are always an issue. Besides that, technical changes introduced for knowledge gained only at a later stage of the project had to be introduced in the fabrication process.