Replacing the Engine In Your Car While You Are Still Driving It
Replacing your accelerator’s timing system with a completely different architecture is not something that happens very often. Perhaps even rarer is the requirement that the replacement not interfere with the accelerator’s normal operational cycle. In 2011, The Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) began the purchasing and installation phase of a nine-year rolling upgrade project which will eventually result in the complete replacement of the low-level RF system, the timing system, the industrial I/O system, the beam-synchronized data acquisition system, the fastprotect reporting system, and much of the diagnostic equipment. These projects are mostly independent of each other, with their own installation schedules, priorities, and time-lines. All of them, however, must interface with the timing system.