--- title: "ANL-5907 — The Argonne 60-Inch Cyclotron · Cyclotron Info" canonical: https://cyclotroninfo.com/library/classics/anl-5907/ description: "Hosted public-domain copy of the 1959 ANL-5907 engineering description of the Argonne 60-inch cyclotron, with a page-referenced reading guide." generated: 2026-11-12 note: "Markdown rendering of the canonical HTML page, generated at build for AI assistants and text tools. Figures and interactive elements are described, not reproduced. On Design Guide rules the source quote, this site's paraphrase and this site's editorial note are labelled separately and must not be conflated." licence: "Datasets CC BY 4.0, census snapshot CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://cyclotroninfo.com/data/); cite as Cyclotron Info, cyclotroninfo.com" --- [Construction Classics](https://cyclotroninfo.com/library/classics/) # The Argonne 60-Inch Cyclotron Ramler, W. J., and G. W. Parker. *The Argonne 60-Inch Cyclotron*, ANL-5907. Argonne National Laboratory (operated by The University of Chicago under AEC contract W-31-109-eng-38), February 1959. 40 pages. Record: [OSTI 4251932](https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4251932) [Download PDF — 12.7 MB, 40 pages](https://cyclotroninfo.com/classics/anl-5907.pdf) ## Why this document can be hosted ANL-5907 is labeled on its own title page as an “AEC Research and Development Report,” produced by Argonne National Laboratory under AEC contract W-31-109-eng-38; AEC-issued contractor reports are treated as US Government works, which carry no copyright. Pre-1978 distribution without a copyright notice stands as an independent public-domain basis. Verified against the title page, distribution markings, and the OSTI record; determination made August 2026. ## Reading guide Forty pages, no theory, every subsystem reduced to numbers. The Argonne 60-inch was bought from Collins Radio on a fixed-price performance contract, and this report reads like the acceptance record it grew out of — the deflected-beam specifications the machine had to meet are printed on p. 3. For a builder it is the collection’s best answer to the question “what does a finished, reliable machine actually measure?” Page references are the report’s printed numbers; the hosted PDF runs two pages ahead. The description chapter walks the systems in order. Cooling (p. 4): a 1000 kW plant against a 300 kW normal load, demineralized water held at or below 10 micromho, and dee water stable to 1°F. Vacuum (pp. 4–8) contains the report’s two best fabrication passages — the dee assembly mounts on a motor-driven carriage running on a grooved rail so the whole RF system rolls out of the chamber for service (p. 4), and the welded vacuum-box specification demands continuous seam welds on the atmosphere side only, with internal braces stagger-welded to keep virtual leaks to a minimum (p. 5). The magnet section (pp. 8–10) is a page of tolerances worth memorizing as ratios: gap variation under 0.005 inch at any radius, Rose-ring shims 1/4 inch thick by 2 inches wide at 26–30 inch radius, azimuthal field variation under 1 part in 3000, and a magnetic median plane within 0.030 inch of the geometric one (p. 10). The arc source (pp. 10–11) is consumables planning in three paragraphs: tantalum hairpin filament in a graphite chimney, 50–120 V at 6–8 A on about 0.1 cc/min of gas, 25–30 hour filament life, and a mechanical design that gets a filament change done in fifteen minutes. RF (pp. 11–14) gives the full electrical picture of an unbiased twin-dee system at 240 kV dee-to-dee for 105 kW of plate input; the deflector (pp. 14–16) runs at 75 kV from a 150 kV supply — two-to-one electrical headroom — and delivers 25–40% acceptance efficiency, an honest number for a mature machine. Operation and beam characteristics (pp. 16–25) include measured deflected-beam profiles (Figs. 10–12, p. 19). The building chapter (pp. 26–32) shows the floor plan driven by the dee withdrawal path. Appendix I (pp. 34–36) is a one-stop specification summary; Appendix II (pp. 37–39) names the suppliers and fabricators of every major component — the only such list in the collection. What scales down: the tolerance ratios, the weld and water-quality discipline, the headroom habits, and the maintainability thinking. What does not: 22-inch pole gaps, 150 kV deflector supplies, and a 265-ton magnet. The hosted copy is an OSTI scan whose text layer is searchable but carries spaced-letter OCR artifacts; a cleaner searchable copy is planned. ## Design rules extracted from this document [8 Design Guide rules](https://cyclotroninfo.com/design-guide/?q=ANL-5907) cite ANL-5907. Representative examples: - [dg-029](https://cyclotroninfo.com/design-guide/#dg-029) — hold pole-gap parallelism to better than 0.005 in - [dg-030](https://cyclotroninfo.com/design-guide/#dg-030) — Rose-ring shims to correct edge-field falloff - [dg-461](https://cyclotroninfo.com/design-guide/#dg-461) — weld discipline against virtual leaks - [dg-186](https://cyclotroninfo.com/design-guide/#dg-186) — size the cooling plant with ~3× margin - [dg-492](https://cyclotroninfo.com/design-guide/#dg-492) — design for maintenance access from day one Used by the [magnet design](https://cyclotroninfo.com/learn/magnet-design/), [ion sources](https://cyclotroninfo.com/learn/ion-sources/), and [beam extraction](https://cyclotroninfo.com/learn/beam-extraction/) deep dives. > **Page provenance.** Last reviewed: 12 August 2026 · Hosted copy verified against the OSTI record; rights review August 2026 · [Methodology](https://cyclotroninfo.com/about/methodology/) · [Report a correction](mailto:info@cyclotroninfo.com?subject=Correction%3A%20ANL-5907%20%E2%80%94%20The%20Argonne%2060-Inch%20Cyclotron) · [Changelog](https://cyclotroninfo.com/changelog/)