Stave Tooling for ALICE ITS Upgrade

The UK is playing a leading role in the ALICE Inner Tracking System (ITS) Upgrade at the LHC at CERN. This is funded by an STFC Project Grant. Daresbury Laboratory is a major production site for the staves of the ITS Upgrade. There are also five other stave construction sites worldwide in Italy, France, Korea, USA and Switzerland. The staves are constructed from CMOS sensors, carbon-fibre support structures, cooling, readout and power buses. The stave construction techniques must be identical across the construction sites. The assembly must be done on identical Coordinate Measuring Machines and using identical tooling which is imperative to maintain continuity of results. This reduces the risk to the project of failure and introduces an important level of contingency in the project planning.

The tooling and construction techniques for the CMMs have been developed by INFN Torino in Italy, who are partners in the project. The production tooling will, however, be produced by a single commercial company. This is necessary to ensure the tooling is identical at each production site. The tender exercise for the tooling production was carried out by CERN on behalf of the ALICE project and was awarded to the company SEL in Italy.