Submitted by Prof. Friedrich... on Mon, 09/06/2025 - 15:30
After many weeks of preparations, today was the day of moving the 2.70m high Big Fridge cryostat. This is the vessel that houses our 20.4T magnet system, which had been moved separately a few days earlier.
The new building features great ceiling height in the Cryostat Hall, which is nice, but there is no access route that allows us to move the cryostat into it without first turning it horizontal. This is not recommended, because a cryostat of this type has many nested radiation shields plus the helium vessel itself. These all move about, when you turn the cryostat away from its vertical orientation, and things may break.
The QM team led by Leszek and Riley, with help from Jiasheng Chen, who is running the 22T cryomagnet in the Maxwell Centre, pinned the internals of the cryostat using an elaborate construction. The movers then used two hoists to rotate the cryostat, and likewise straightened it up again in the new building. It looks like it worked! We'll see when we try to pump down the vacuum space again...