Automounter

PLEASE NOTE: YOU MUST USE THE PIN BASES SPECIFIED BELOW. Other pin bases may not work in the ALS beamline automounters.

1 Introduction
2 Arrangements for Use
3 Equipment Required
4 Ordering
5 Loading pins into Rigaku pucks
6 Loading pins into ALS or Unipucks pucks
7 Further Details on the sector 5 Robot Use

[edit] Introduction

The Automounter is an automated cryogenic crystal mounting system that is aimed at high-throughput macromolecular crystallography by increasing experimental efficiency and reliability. Automounters are available on beamlines 5.0.1, 5.0.2, 5.0.3, 8.2.1 and 8.2.2.

The automounters consist of a robotic arm to place pins on the goniometter, and a dewar to hold the crystals, where they sit in "pucks":

The robot arm, or "gripper", reaches into the dewar and picks up crystals one at a time to mount them on the goniometer at the beamline.

THE 5.0.1, 5.0.2, 5.0.3 ROBOT:

THE 8.2.2 ROBOT:

[edit] Arrangements for Use

Approximately 1-2 weeks before your scheduled beamline time you will be contacted by our administrative staff. At this time you need to indicate whether you are interested in using the automounter. All users must be trained on the automounter prior to use. Beamline staff will conduct training at the beginning of your scheduled time. Before you can use the automounter you will need to obtain your own set of pucks and puck tools, detailed section below. The beamtime to users always begins at 10:00 A.M. (unless specific changes to the schedule are made).

[edit] Equipment Required

The automounter requires: (1) pucks, (2) the associated puck tools, (3) specially sized bases and pins of a certain length. Crystals will need to be pre-mounted in the pucks prior to arrival.

1. PUCKS

The 5.0.1, 5.0.2, and 5.0.3 robot takes both the ALS-style pucks and the Unipucks. These pucks hold 16 pins each, and there are 6 puck slots in the robot dewar.

ALS pucks:

Unipucks:

The 8.2.1 and 8.2.2 Rigaku robots take the ALS-style pucks, the Unipucks, and the Rigaku-style pucks. The Rigaku pucks hold 12 pins each, and there are 5 puck slots in the dewar.

Rigaku pucks:

2. PUCK TOOLS

The ALS pucks and Unipucks require puck tongs (used for holding pucks or transfering pucks from dewars), a puck pusher tool (used to load pucks into the dewar at the beamline), a puck wand (used to put the lid onto the puck), a puck separator tool (user to remove the lid from the puck), and a shipping cane (used to ship pucks to/from the beamline).

ALS Puck and Unipuck Tools:

From left to right: bent puck tongs, straight puck tong, puck pusher, puck wand, puck separator tool.

The Rigaku pucks require the ACTOR pin tongs (used to load pins into pucks), the ACTOR pin check (used to check that pins are seated correctly in the pucks), the puck tongs (used to load the pucks into the dewar at the beamline), and the ACTOR shipping cane (used to ship pucks to/from the beamline).

Rigaku Puck Tools:

From top to bottom: pin tongs, puck tongs, pucks, shipping cane.

4. BASES

The bases that must be used in the BCSB automounters are the Hampton Part Number HR4-779 "Crystal Cap Magnetic ALS".

These are different from the bases used in the SSRL automounter:

Left: SSRL base, Right: ALS base.

PLEASE NOTE: PLEASE TRY TO USE THE ALS PIN BASES. Other pin bases now work in the ALS beamline automounters, but are not quite as reliable.

4. PINS

The only length of pin that can be used with the BCSB automounters are "Hampton 18 mm" pins. This corresponds to breaking off the two end segments of a Hampton pin.

The dimensions are fairly critical here, and the most important one from the automounter's standpoint is the distance from the inside mounting surface (which corresponds with the top of the goniometer magnetic mount) to the center of the crystal = 20.3mm ± 1mm.

It appears that the SSRL-style pins with the copper stem do not work well with our off-axis coldstreams. They work OK after an initial mount of the crystal, but subsequent dismount/remounts seem to result in excessive crystal warmup.

Hampton pins:

[edit] Ordering

The ALS pucks and puck tools can be ordered from:

Peter Boyd
Boyd Technologies
Box 95
Manchester, CA 95459
phone: (707) 882-1630
cell: (707) 484-7571
fax: (707) 882-1745
email: pbboyd@earthlink.net
http://www.boydtechnologies.com/

ITEM	PRICE ($)
10" bent cryo tong	130
10" straight cryo tong	130
Puck pusher	150
Puck wand	150
Cryo puck	60
Magnetic cryo puck lid	110
Cryo puck shipping cane (Shipping cane for Taylor Wharton CP100 shipping dewar or 34HC)	1000
Puck separator tool	350

The Rigaku pucks and puck tools can be ordered from:
http://www.rigaku.com/automation/actor-tools.html

A 2008 pricelist can be found here: Rigaku tools pricelist

Unipucks can be purchased from:
http://www.crystalpositioningsystems.com/
The Unipuck tools are the same as the ALS puck tools.

Bases can be ordered from either of the following suppliers:
Vineburg Machining Inc (www.vineburgmachining.com, 775-246-4336)
or
Hampton Research (www.hamptonresearch.com)
Part Number HR4-779 "Crystal Cap Magnetic ALS"

Pins can also be ordered from Hampton Research. They come in a variety of sizes. Sample pack part numbers are HR4-993 (10 micron loops) and HR4-941 (20 micron loops)

[edit] Loading pins into Rigaku pucks

For the Rigaku pucks, you can use the bent cryotong to load the pins as shown below. Care should be taken to insure the pin is in contact with the base before releasing the cryotong:

In this picture, there are pins sitting in positions 1 through 6 of the puck.

Alternately, you can load Rigaku pucks using tweezers to put the entire base and vial into the puck. Just be sure to let the staff know that the caps are still on the pins, so they can remove the caps before placing the pucks in the robot dewar.

Check Your Pins: It is very important to check the seating of your pins when using Rigaku style pucks. The easiest way to accomplish this is to visually inspect the puck by lifting the puck top above the liquid nitrogen level and shining a flashlight on it. This provides a clearer view into the base of the puck and should allow you to see any improperly aligned pins. If it is difficult to see the pins, look for symetry in the reflectivity of the pins. A tipped pin will often look shadowed and asymetric. In the following photo, pins 2,5,8,9,11 and 12 are improperly mounted:

If a pin is tipped over the easiest and safest way to reseat it without harming your crystal is to use a straight probe about the diameter of a wire coat hanger to reseat the pin by gently pushing on the top of the pin base opposite to which the pin is leaning. The pin should "snap" firmly onto the base when straightened. The ACTOR pin check tool can also be used, but a visual inspection is preffered and generally more reliable.

[edit] Loading pins into ALS or Unipucks pucks

The NSLS has made an excellent video on how to load pins into the ALS pucks and Unipucks. It can be found here:

http://www.px.nsls.bnl.gov/robot/robot_video.html

For getting the pins back out of the ALS pucks, you can use the puck separator tool. First, under LN, place the puck in the separator holder as shown: