CMS and ATLAS honour their suppliers

In order to motivate the hundreds of companies building their detectors, the CMS and ATLAS collaborations have recently been handing out awards of excellence to their top suppliers. At its second ceremony of this kind, CMS honoured four of its suppliers, while ATLAS for the first time paid tribute to two of its contractors.

The atmosphere in the Council Chamber was festive rather than formal at the start of CMS week on Monday 5 March. Before embarking upon a long series of seminars and presentations, the Collaboration held its second awards ceremony to honour its top suppliers. By paying tribute to the exceptional efforts of certain suppliers, the Collaboration's aim is to motivate all the firms, some 500 in total, taking part in the experiment's construction. The CMS Awards panel thus singles out contractors who have not only provided full satisfaction in terms of compliance with specifications, quality and deadlines, but have in addition provided original solutions to delicate problems.
Four firms came away with CMS Gold Awards, and the -exceptional- work of two of these was further rewarded with the Crystal Award, a crystal trophy adorned with an embedded time-piece. 'The Crystal Award is given in recognition of extraordinary work in the fields of innovation and management,' underlines Hans Rykaczewski, financial coordinator for the CMS magnet.
This was the case for the Japanese firm Kawasaki Heavy Industries, which, under a contract with the University of Wisconsin, manufactured the six 15-m diameter steel disks making up the two end-caps of the yoke. Once these impressive items have been re-assembled, the two thinner disks at each end will weigh 300 tonnes, the two intermediate ones 700 tonnes and the two innermost disks 1250 tonnes! Each disk comprises twenty sectors. 'The sectors of the inner and intermediate disks are made up of three welded plates sandwiched together," explains magnet yoke coordinator Jean-Paul Grillet. 'This original solution has the advantage of being less expensive while at the same time providing sufficient resistance against the huge magnetic forces.'

CMS awarded its highest distinction to two suppliers: the Spanish firm Felguera Construcciones Mecanicas, represented by Ernesto Alvarez (left) and the Japanese firm Kawasaki Heavy Industries, represented by Kazuo Mizuno (right).

The other Crystal Award recipient was Fermilab contractor Felguera Construcciones Mecanicas, a Spanish firm which produced the wedge-shaped structures forming the two 550-tonne half-barrels of the CMS hadron calorimeter (HCAL). This supplier produced some 1100 tonnes of brass plates, the largest some four metres in length and weighing in at more than a tonne. 'This firm also undertook a full trial assembly at its factory,' explains HCAL technical coordinator Jim Freeman.
The two other companies to receive Gold Awards, in the form of commemorative plaques, were Hudong Heavy Machinery Co., honoured for its construction, within the framework of a CERN-China agreement, of the 30-tonne support carts with which each endcap disk can be independently manoeuvred, and the American firm Superbolt Inc. for its manufacture of more than 1500 high-strength bolts for the assembly of the endcap disks. Before the prizes were handed out by Lorenzo Foà, Chairperson of the CMS Collaboration Board, the winners were given a guided tour of Point 5 at Cessy, the final assembly site for the CMS magnet.

Awards for two ATLAS suppliers

By coincidence, ATLAS had been honouring its own top suppliers just four days earlier. This is the first year the collaboration has organised such awards, and the aim is the same, namely to motivate the firms involved in building the immense detector in close cooperation with the member institutes of ATLAS. 'Firms really appreciate this kind of award,' says ATLAS financial coordinator Markus Nordberg, 'because being a CERN supplier is a reference and generates important marketing spin-offs.' This was confirmed by Patrick and Simon Hester, directors of British company Lamina Dielectrics, who appeared delighted and even somewhat moved to be receiving their award from the hands of ATLAS Collaboration Spokesperson Peter Jenni. 'This is a reward for the hard work of a whole team,' explained Patrick Hester, founder of the small family business. Lamina Dielectrics manufactured the 180,000 straws for the ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT). These polyimide (or Kapton) tubes are 1.66 metres long and just 4 mm in diameter. Even more remarkable is the tolerance on this diameter of just 15 microns over the entire manufacturing period! A straw is produced by winding and bonding together two thin strips of polyimide film coated with aluminium and graphite on one side and polyurethane on the other. The main challenge was to obtain a satisfactory final product complying with stringent mechanical specifications at the end of such a tricky manufacturing process. Not only did the firm meet this challenge to perfection but it even managed to achieve a lower rejection rate than was originally foreseen. The other feather in Lamina Dielectrics' cap was the excellence of its quality control procedures, enabling the company to detect defective raw materials and thus avoid costly recalls. 'They acted quickly and at an early stage in the production,' explained TRT Project Leader Daniel Froidevaux, 'and their cooperation was remarkable.'

Peter Jenni, ATLAS collaboration spokesman, presents the prize for best supplier to Lamina Dielectrics. Left to right : Peter Jenni, Patrick and Simon Hester of Lamina Dielectrics, and Daniel Froidevaux project leader for the ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker.

The other award-winner was Czech firm Králodvorské Zelezárny Válcovna za Studena, which supplied 3,000 tonnes of steel sheeting for the ATLAS barrel's tile hadron calorimeter. A colossal volume, 'almost half the mass of the Eiffel Tower', observes Markus Nordberg. But even more impressive than the quantity was the precision obtained over the entire manufacturing process. The trapezoidal plates had to be 4 and 5 mm thick, and the company managed to obtain a tolerance of more or less 0.04 mm over the entire production! This was a remarkable achievement, given that the precision obtained far exceeds the international standards for this type of product, and also goes beyond what was specified. These plates, manufactured by cold rolling, will be used as absorber material in the hadron calorimeter.