EPICS implementation for the KSTAR vacuum control system

KSTAR is fully superconducting tokamak under construction, capable of quasi-steady state, and long pulse operation. KSTAR has two parts of vacuum system. One is the cryostat vacuum system to maintain low temperature (4/80 K) for thermal shielding of superconducting magnets. Other is the vacuum vessel to contain the plasma in double-walled evacuated space. For integration of KSTAR machine control, we chose experimental physics and industrial control system (EPICS) as a middleware at the engineering phase. Because EPICS is a good solution to implement the distributed control and the real time control for the tokamak, aiming at long pulse operation. The vacuum control system is the first local control system implemented using EPICS, and becomes an important pilot system to demonstrate the capability of EPICS on the machine control system. In this paper, we describe a procedure from designing hardware drivers to realizing operation panel.