A decade after making an in-vessel, Tritium-containing, antenna for ECE and reflectometer measurements on the JET Tokomak, TK has been making  new front optics, which will allow a different area of the plasma to be probed. Designed on our PRO/E Creo Gaussian-beam enabled CAD system, TK's 3D printer was used to check the general configuration of the part. Manufacture - including some tricky spark erosion -  is now complete and we expect installation will occur before the end of 2014 The new antenna front-end and the 3D printed sample.    

Well over a decade ago, QMC Instruments made a small free standing wire polarizing grid which JPL's MIRO instrument on the Rosetta mission uses to separate incoming radiation into two channels: Two radiometers have been looking at 188 GHz (1.6 mm) and 562 GHz (0.5 mm). The lower band provides continuum measurements, giving subsurface temperature measurements, the higher frequency channel cover vibration lines which include H2O, CO, CH3OH, and NH3 and the isotopes H217O and H218O   Worth reading the ESA MIRO Blog here   Image thanks to ESA MIRO has been measuring the rate of Water Loss from 67P/C-G.  At its peak we are told here that the comet is losing 5 Li...

Thomas Keating welcomes Josh Martin to begin his toolmaking apprenticeship. First year training will cover the manufacture of personal equipment using traditional skills to our proven designs dating back to the early 1940's.

In 2013 Thomas Keating stepped up its efforts to provide students who have Physics and Engineering in their sights  - both at school and at university -  with an experience of industrial life.  We have continued this into 2014. Vicky Whiting is an Engineering undergraduate at the University of Bath and joined TK for a month in summer 2014.  She worked on a range of projects, including: a study of the uses of a new 3D printer at TKdesigning a new support for the electronics boards used in the Support Units in the Pro/Engineer CAD package and printed themprinting a model of an upgrade to a quasi-optical in-vessel plasma diagnostics for the Joint European Taurus (JET)designi...

TK has delivered and installed a Quasi-Optics (QO) sub-system to link a Bruker/CPI 400 GHz 40 W gyrotron to two separate DNP probes at the US National High Magnetic Field Lab in Tallahassee. Working with NHMFL colleagues Steve Hill and Thierry Dubroca, the QO sub-system takes the output of the gyrotron and routes the energy to an NMR Probe.  On the way, the Quasi Optics circuit cleans up up the polarization,switches an in-and-out dump, using a fast actuator, allowing variable average power with changing mark/space ratios,attenuates the beam using a three grid system, using scaleless cone technology to absorb the powerswitches the power between two DNP magnets,provide power monitoring,sp...

Over many years Thomas Keating has collaborated with Virginia Diode Inc - with TK providing Quasi-Optics and VDI source chains. Many of these combinations are found on ESR and DNP system operating around the world at frequencies above 100 GHz. Our colleagues Tom Crowe and Steve Jones organized a walk to see the top of Mount Rainier, on an trip run by Rainier Mountain Inc. TK's MD Richard Wylde and his brother-in-law William Wilcock were lucky enough to join the expedition. We took the nominally easy Disappointment Cleaver route.....   Climbing to the summit on the summer Solstice, we were very fortunate with the weather and, with Tom and Steve help, unfurled the TK Queen's Award flag at...