NMR Oxford Superconducting magnet QUENCH at Reading University

[vibrio]

our ultrashield avance 600mhz quenched twice during my PhD lol

[sbscottmonkey]

@vibrio

Bet you loved that!! There's a LOT of helium in a 600!

[vibrio]

@sbscottmonkey

they were at night so never saw them - just the big dent in the ceiling tils from where the port cover flew off lol

[armondikov]

@vibrio Funny that, because the only magnet that's quenched in my department that I've heard of is a 600 ultrashield...

[xjet]

The problem is that helium is an increasingly scarce resource -- in fact the USA has already expressed concern over the limited amount of the stuff that remains on earth. Unless we come up with some large-scale fusion reactors that create the stuff as a byproduct then we're going to be stuff once the current stocks are gone.

[ash18746]

i'll make sure not to apply to grad schoolhere , cuz you guys looks like a bunch of idiots. machine costs over a 100k you really wanna be messing around with that?

[sbscottmonkey]

@ash18746

Hi Ash, thanks for the "nice" "positive" words...

This magnet was actually being replaced by a brand new Bruker "Ultrashield" magnet. This old one was made by Oxford Instruments some 20 years ago, and was scrapped. Quenching a magnet is the fastest way of "warming it up" to room temperature so we could dismantle it to be scrapped.

I was one of the 'only two' superconducting magnet specialist field service engineers in the UK at the time, so we really did know what we were doing.....

[scrillyto]

This is Epic!  Anybody got a video of an accidental quench?? hahha

[blackhole89]

sbscottmonkey: You'll probably laugh bitter tears at what the world has come to, but Cambridge (the UK one) - not ruling out that others did it as well, of course.

Greetings to all you other people looking at this when you really should be learning for your exams. I know you're out there~

[sbscottmonkey]

Cool - this has made it into your lecture notes!!?? Which University are you at? Cheers, Scott.

[hai2410]

I really don't understand why this is in my lecture notes.

[surfcello]

@hai2410 Perhaps to illustrate how much energy can be stored in an inductor? At least, I think that's why it's in my lecture notes.

[gideonfarrell]

@surfcello the joys of NST1A?

[sbscottmonkey]

Somewhere in the region of £6 or £7 per Litre!

[Hewpie]

How much does liquid helium cost?

[sbscottmonkey]

In your quench video - I like it when the baffles come flying out!

[mrwideboy]

It still make me laugh every time I see a quench, execpt when i'm on top of it pulling the leads out and goes I your face !