Direct Line to the Universe

Atieh works for the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Meyrin near Geneva (Switzerland), better known as CERN, the world’s largest research center for particle physics. Since the organization was founded in 1954, scientists have been searching for answers to the fundamental questions of physics at the world’s largest research center for particle physics. What is matter made of? What forces hold it together? What exactly happened shortly after the Big Bang?

To find answers to these questions, CERN researchers operate massive particle accelerators that provide insights into the nature of matter and the forces in the universe. Many scientific breakthroughs have been achieved with the support of the complex systems in recent decades. The researchers celebrated a spectacular discovery in 2012, when they proved for the first time the existence of the Higgs boson particle, which gives all things in the universe their mass.

Since 2010, CERN researchers have been operating the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator. This is housed in a circular tunnel that has a circumference of 27 kilometers and runs at a depth of 100 meters under both Swiss and French territory. The LHC can offer several superlatives. One of them is that inside the magnets that keep the particles on their circular path, the temperature is minus 271 degrees Celsius, which is colder than in outer space. Building and operating a system like the LHC requires the best machines and materials that are available on the market – as well as creative engineers and technicians. This is where Atieh comes in. He heads CERN’s main workshop with 50 employees, where prototypes for new LHC components are created.

It is no wonder that CERN is a special customer for GF Machining Solutions. “ Because the technicians and scientists keep pushing things to their limits here, they also need state-of-the-art machines,” says Patrick Debonneville, who has been with GF Machining Solutions for 41 years and has been a sales engineer in Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) since 1995.

CERN has been working together with GF Machining Solutions since 1980. At that time, the research center purchased the first wire-cutting EDM machine, followed by a newer model in 1998. In 2018, when the machine was nearing the end of its useful life, Debonneville supported Atieh in the purchase of a new CUT P 800 machine. It took patience to find an answer to every question – technological and economic.

Inside the machine, electrical sparks jump between a thin wire and the workpiece 600’000 times per second, creating a temperature of around 15’000 degree Celsius at specific points.“This allows metals to be cut much more precisely than with a milling machine,” Debonneville explains.

At CERN, the technicians in the workshop often work with exotic materials. These include the metal Niobium, which has the high conductivity necessary to generate high magnetic fields. “We need new components made of Niobium to make the LHC even more powerful in the future or to build completely new particle accelerators,” Atieh says. “For this, we have to produce very precise, sophisticated components such as the crab cavities for the upgrade of the LHC – the perfect task for wire-cutting EDM machines.”

However, some adjustments to the technology were necessary. After all, almost all other GF customers use it to cut more common materials such as steel, aluminum, or titanium. Due to the machining behavior of Niobium, application specialists from GF Machining Solutions had to adjust some of the machine’s characteristics, such as the tension of the wire or the frequency of the electrical voltage, so that it could meet CERN’s specific needs. For two years, Atieh and Debonneville kept exchanging requirements and ideas for possible solutions. In March 2021, the time had come: The new CUT P 800 was delivered to the main workshop at CERN. There, it will play its part in answering the big questions in physics over the next 20 years.