A second upending tool to speed up the process
An upending tool is designed to handle some of the largest ITER components such as vacuum vessel sectors and toroidal field coils. As a consequence, its steel frame is quite cumbersome and can only be delivered in two halves that are later bolted together.
On Friday 28 March, the first half of a second upending tool, required to speed up the assembly of the sector modules, was delivered to ITER and will be followed by the second half this week. Manufactured under tight time constraints by the Korean company Yujin Mechatronics, this second upending tool, although very similar to the first one, is more versatile.
As the handling of vacuum vessel sectors and toroidal field coils requires different sets of attachments, the original upending tool, in use at ITER for the past five years, needed to be reconfigured for every operation. With two units soon available, each one will be “specialized” in one type of component. Lengthy reconfiguration operations will not be needed anymore, and time in the range of weeks will be saved in the assembly process schedule.