Magnet alignment on a common girder: Development of a length artefact for measurement accuracy improvement

The tolerances for the alignment of the magnets on the girders of the proposed particle accelerator of the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS), Sirius, are as small as 40 μm for translations and 0.3 mrad for rotations. The functional axis of the magnets is measured by the vibrating wire technique, which employs conductive wires of diameters of approx. 0.1 mm. Since the alignment has to be performed targeting these magnetic axes, rather than their geometric centrelines, non-contact measuring sensors mounted on a coordinate measuring machine have been chosen to measure the relative deviations between magnets. To better the measurement accuracy for that specific measuring task, to allow interim checks on multiple coordinate measuring systems, and to provide effective traceability to the SI unit of length, a multipurpose geometrical artefact has been devised. The reasoning behind this development and the first measurement results are described in this paper.