Upgrade of J-PARC/MLF General Control System with EPICS/CSS

The general control system of the Materials and Life Science Experimental Facility (MLF), called the MLFGCS, comprises programmable logic controllers (PLCs), iFix operator interfaces (OPIs), and data servers. It controls various systems and equipment, including the mercury circulation system and the safety system. The present system has worked well; however, scalability and upgradability issues exist because of the poor flexibility of its operating system (OS) and version incompatibility. To overcome the weaknesses inherent in this system, we decided to replace it with a more advanced system that has high scalability and usability. Consequently, we selected Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) and Control System Studio (CSS) as our framework, along with new OPI software, on which basis we built a prototype and investigated its performance. Using an OPC server and the EPICS OPC device, we confirmed that EPICS was able to communicate with the PLCs. Further, using a PostgreSQL-based data server, a data storage test on data comprising approximately 7000 points connecting to the current MLF-GCS devices was successfully conducted. In addition, we verified the OPI functions of CSS. These successful results motivated us to introduce the EPICS/CSS system as a suitably advanced MLF-GCS.