An assembly line for the construction of ultra-radio-pure detectors

Abstract The 19 towers constituting the CUORE detector are an assembly of ultra-radio-pure components made of copper and PTFE plus tellurium dioxide crystals for a total of more than 10,000 pieces. A dedicated assembly line is mandatory to handle and assemble those parts and to minimize the risk of recontamination induced by external agents both during their construction and during their storage prior to installation inside the cryostat. The assembly strategy and the tool design proposed in this paper and developed for CUORE offer solutions that can be extended to the construction of similar-size detectors with strict requirements regarding contamination.