GEMS ENGINEERING LTD.

GEMS ENGINEERING LTD.

is an engineering SME specialized for the R&D market and offering innovative engineering and managerial solutions for projects involving substantial amounts of human expertise. We are supplying solutions covering the whole development process: from conceptual through final designs up-to prototype manufacturing, testing and installation of the final product.

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> Our projects > Alignment jigs for mounting the outer vessel steady state sensors of the ITER fusion reactor

Alignment jigs for mounting the outer vessel steady state sensors of the ITER fusion reactor

Induction heating of the bolt samples. A total of 15000 thermal cycles were performed between 100 and 200 °C
GEMS Engineering Ltd. has become the first ever Hungarian private company, that has supplied components to be used for the assembly of the ITER fusion reactor.
GEMS Engineering Ltd. has become the first ever Hungarian private company, that has supplied components to be used for the assembly of the ITER fusion reactor. The ITER machine will be used for scientific-technological purposes, to help the engineers and scientists know how the fusion plasma behaves at large scales. For this reason, one of the most important components of this huge machine are the small magnetic diagnostic sensors which will need to be perfectly mounted to have accurate signals from them before, during, and after the plasma pulses. GEMS Engineering Ltd. won the contract for the design and manufacturing of jigs for the alignment of the tangential and normal outer vessel steady state magnetic sensors in three sectors (2, 5 and 8). GEMS produced 10 pieces of jigs which would be used to accurately set-up all the 60 sensors. These jigs will “only” be used for aligning the sensors and they will be removed thereafter, in order not to contaminate the components that remain attached to the vacuum vessel. During the manufacturing, exclusively certified stainless steel and bronze raw materials were allowed to be used.

Latest news

Alignment jigs supplied by GEMS are in use during the assembly of the ITER fusion reactor
[30 July 2022]
Tests of the inclinometer with one of the jigs
Tests of the inclinometer with one of the jigs
GEMS Engineering Ltd. became part of the assembly phase of the ITER machine via their alignment jigs manufactured and delivered some months ago to the ITER site. At the beginning of the summer, the assembly team started to use the jigs for mounting the normal and tangential steady state magnetic sensors to the outer surface of the vacuum vessel of the ITER fusion reactor.

During the installation, the sensors are welded to a small stainless-steel tube, called “boss” which itself is welded to the vacuum vessel outer shell. The sensor housing needs to be aligned precisely (<1°) with both, the radial and the toroidal axis before the housing is welded to the “boss”. The jig contains a dual-axis inclinometer, which is to measure both, the rotation angle along the boss radial axis and the angle in the toroidal direction. Radial and toroidal misalignments of the sensors need to be corrected prior to the welding of them to the “boss” using the installation jigs supplied by GMES Engineering Ltd.

GEMS supplied 10 alignment jigs for the ITER Organisation which are used for mounting 60 steady state sensors for the outer surface of 3 sectors (#2, #5 and #8) of the ITER tokamak.

Vacuum vessel sector #8 can be seen in Figure 4. After inspection, the sector will be equipped with fasteners, instrumentation and diagnostics before moving it to a vertical position in sub-assembly tooling.

One of the jigs in action at vacuum vessel sector #8
One of the jigs in action at vacuum vessel sector #8
CAD model of vacuum vessel sector #2, #5 and #8
CAD model of vacuum vessel sector #2, #5 and #8
Vacuum vessel sector #8 [source: iter.org]
Vacuum vessel sector #8
[source: iter.org]
Jigs for the alignment of the tangential and normal outer vessel steady state magnetic sensors
Project completed!
[11 January 2022] The jigs were shipped to the ITER Organization to Cadarache, France in mid-January 2022 and they will be used for mounting of the sensors from April onwards.

Major references

GEMS Engineering is deeply involved in and fully devoted to the success of the ITER project. As a result, our main reference works are in connection with ITER, and - more closely - to its diagnostic systems.

The ITER device, currently under construction in the south of France, will study the potential of controlled nuclear fusion to provide energy for mankind. In order to study the behaviour of this device, a set of monitoring systems (referred to as Diagnostics) is required. These Diagnostics will provide the information required to understand the performance of the device.

Infrastructure development for in-vessel diagnostic signal transmission
Infrastructure development for in-vessel diagnostic signal transmission
 The Erosion Deposition Monitor under the divertor dome in ITER
The Erosion Deposition Monitor under the divertor dome in ITER
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