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Diamond Light
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Metstrut has supplied over 6km of bespoke cable tray to Balfour Kilpatrick, for the £250 million Diamond synchrotron, the largest scientific facility to be built in the UK for over 30 years.
The specially adapted cable tray was prefabricated by Metstrut into 24 “achromats”, each one a 16m set of prefabricated, pre- assembled modules in six units of differing lengths, each 600mm wide and 740mm high. Metstrut cable trays carry all of the complex electrical cabling requirements for each of the 24 experimental research stations, control rooms, laboratories and offices within the doughnut-shaped building on the Harwell science campus.
The Metstrut 50mm deep return flange heavy duty cable tray is capable of carrying loadings of 250N/m. The bottom tier of tray carries 55mm thick dipole cables, the one above power cables, the second one control cables and the top tier instrument cabling.
Metstrut worked closely with Balfour Kilpatrick to develop the most efficient way of supplying the cable tray for the Diamond project, delivering each achromat as a set of completed racks together with specially designed connection plates set to the curve of the building, enabling Balfour Kilpatrick engineers to lay the modules out, fix them together and bolt them to the floor.
Metstrut adapted the design of its standard cable tray to meet the Diamond’s particular specification. The perforation pattern was changed to a symmetrical layout, with the holes running in one direction, to eliminate any potential for crossover of the electro magnetic forces emitted by the very powerful electron beam.
Balfour Kilpatrick specified Metstrut cable tray for the project because of the company’s design capability, its manufacturing resource, including prefabrication facilities and its competitive pricing.
The Diamond synchrotron building is the size of five football pitches and is owned and run by Diamond Light Source, a joint venture company between the UK Government and the Wellcome Trust.
