A unique cabling machine designed to produce Rutherford-type superconducting cable for the SSC project

Up to 25000 km of keystoned flat cable must be produced for the SCC (Superconducting Super Collider) project. Starting from a specification developed by Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, a special cabling machine has been designed to run at a speed corresponding to a maximum production rate of 10 m/min. This cabling machine is the key part of the production line, which consists of a precision Turkshead equipped with a variable power drive, a caterpillar, a dimensional control bench, a data acquisition system, and a take-up unit. The main features of the cabling unit described are a design with nearly equal path between spool and assembling point for all the wires and the possibility of running the machine with several over- or under-twisting ratios between cable and wires. These requirements led to the choice of an unconventional mechanical concept. With this equipment, the first trial run using 30 strands of superconducting wire produced cable within the dimensional tolerances at speeds up to 10 m/min without any crossovers