ALS-United is an opportunity to meet the people collaborating at the Advanced Light Source and the ALS Upgrade Project. Hear firsthand how team science enables the cutting-edge research of today and builds the facility of the future. This month, we spoke with Thomas Gaucher (Manufacturing Engineer), Raul Mascote (Engineering Technical Associate), and Adrian Williams (Engineering Technical Associate).
Read the Q&A after the video:
What do you do and what led you to your current position?
Williams: My name is Adrian Williams. My name is Adrian Williams. I’ve been here since 2007, a mechanical technician (mech tech) at the Advanced Light Source. My current job is keeping the accelerator going while we still have users and operations. I had a career at Trader Joe’s previous to this and was building hot rods and the four-wheel drives in a garage with my roommates and wanted to change my career path, so got the job here and the rest is history.
Mascote: My name is Raul Mascote. I’m a mech tech for the ALS-U/ALS team, a vacuum tech. I’m currently working on the storage ring (SR) vacuum side, qualifying, leak checking, making sure chambers pass. My career led me here because I started out back in 1991 at Argonne National Lab and almost five years ago I moved out here to work at the ALS.
Gaucher: I’m a mechanical engineer here at the vacuum group. I’ve been working here for more than six years now. I’m responsible for finalizing the design and fabrication of the components. And inspection, qualification, integration in the tunnel. Previously, I used to work in International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), France. I was a mechanical engineer. Then I changed to a private company to build an ion source. This is where I started learning vacuum and then this skill led me to the vacuum group at ALS-U.
How do you work together?
Mascote: Me and Adrian collaborated on installing the new booster-to-storage ring (BTS) and booster-to-accumulator ring (BTA) vacuum chambers to connect the vacuum to the new accumulator ring (AR). Me and Thomas work on the new ALS-U vacuum components.
Williams: Our teams have become one ALS, ALS-U about a year ago, and among incorporating the new into the old, we also take care of current beamlines and upgrades still going on at the ALS.
Gaucher: So as Raul said, he helped the vacuum team do all the inspection on vacuum components, leak test, every vacuum work he helped us with that.
What is a recent accomplishment you are proud of?
Mascote: My team along with Thomas, with a little bit of help from Adrian, we finished the AR, which is a big milestone. It’s installing pretty much a new accumulator ring and the existing storage ring along with the old storage ring.
Williams: I’d say some of my biggest accomplishments are making sure the machine turns on after these big grueling shutdowns.
Gaucher: My biggest accomplishment I would say I’m the guy who oversees the vacuum installation in the tunnel and as I work with Raul, I would say most of the credit goes to Raul for the installation but I got to supervise everything.
What’s on the horizon for you and your team?
Mascote: Well, between me and Thomas and probably Adrian are going to start helping us out by building the storage ring. The new storage ring that’s going to take the place of the old one. So, that’s what you see behind us. And yeah, we have to qualify it and get it under vacuum, hand off to pre-staging and qualify it again.
Williams: We’ll also be tasked with beamline upgrades and moving beamlines accordingly.
Why do we need such a good vacuum at the ALS?
Gaucher: The vacuum in the machine is needed because when you inject an electron into the beam if you don’t have a vacuum chamber, if you have here you have a molecule and if the the electron hits the molecule you have a loss of energy and you cannot achieve what you need. So the vacuum is done to have perfect paths for the electron to run. And this is where Raul comes to help us with the vacuum qualification.
Williams: A lot of clean assembly. All of our components need to be clean inside. So, a lot of clean glove assembly. I do a lot of optical assemblies as well for beamlines. So, masks, just the act of talking produces enough spit to damage a mirror. So, everything’s got to be very clean and that’s what he’s talking about qualifying. It’s got to be so clean that stuff’s not outgassing when it’s getting pumped. So, part of it’s just cleanliness.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
Mascote: I am currently the baseball coach for my young son. So, a lot of my time goes to helping coach the team.
Williams: A lot of my time goes to facilitating my kids’ martial arts, and I have a small machine shop at home I like to play in.
Gaucher: And I used to do a lot of sports, hiking, cycling, running, and I try to raise my kid.
What else would you like to share?
Gaucher: I just want to say that we have the engineers on one side and mech techs on the other side. But without the mech techs, the engineer can do nothing. It’s a huge collaboration and that’s important to say that. A lot of the credit goes to the mech techs.
Mascote: We appreciate that. Thank you.
Williams: Thank you. It’s where the rubber meets the road.