Development of a new control interface for the electron gun pulser of TLS Linac

Abstract

The electron gun control system, which serves as the TLS LINAC’s power source, has been in operation for more than two decades. Since some components of a previously designed circuit have aged and been discontinued, the control system will become unreliable and irreparable. A new control interface of electron gun pulser has been developed to improve the operational stability and future maintenance of the electron gun control system. To achieve remote control, an SBC (single-board computer) equipped with a high-precision AD/DA expansion board was used as a control interface. The signal processing circuit module generates the bias and b-plus voltages that are output to the electron gun and also provides instant feedback voltage readings. For easier maintenance, the new electron gun pulser control modules have been assembled into a single box. Furthermore, this software architecture of control interface has been based on the EPICS framework and integrated with an existing TLS control system. The efforts of rejuvenating electron gun pulser control system are described in this paper.