The Daresbury tandem. A review 1970-92

Abstract A review of the technical developments which were made for the design of the Daresbury 20 MV tandem with particular emphasis on those ideas which were new and innovative is presented. The topics discussed include the high current inductive charging system or laddertron, the shielding of insulators and resistors from voltage surges, the hard vacuum ceramic/titanium accelerator tube, screening of sensitive electronics and the control system. The developments made to these systems over the years of full time operation from 1983 to 1992 are described and the most recent additions to the accelerator to improve the ion bunch stability and to improve the operational beam transmission efficiency using specially developed computer software are also described.