And… it works!

Dectris was here at the ALS during the recent 2-bunch mode, and re-installed two of the modules on the Pilatus detector on beamline 5.0.2. Users may not have noticed, but the detector was previously missing panels on the far edges. These are now in good working order, and several test data sets have been collected…

Recently, Marc helped a user run some crystals which the user had arranged to have grown in zero-gravity. Here are pictures of the crystal capillaries mounted at the beamline, and the raster grid used to locate crystals within a capillary.

ALS is down for the month of July and the first week or so of August. We are taking the opportunity to do a bunch of preventative maintenance on our beamlines. Some of the items include: – cleaning the Be window on 502 (may help to decrease scatter in images) – replacing air lines –…

Our second User Forum was on March 4, in which we discussed the purchase of a pixel-array detector for beamline 5.0.2. The exciting news since then is that we will be able to purchase a Pilatus 6M for the beamline. Expected delivery is in September of this year.

The third User Forum was on April 2, in which we discussed the diode-beamstop device which the BCSB is developing (allows measurement of flux during data collection), as well as the MiniKappa interlocks on beamline 5.0.2, which will now allow a full 360 rotation of omega (sometimes called Phi) with a maximum kappa angle of 55 degrees.

Several BCSB staff teamed up with other ALS beamline scientists to represent the ALS at this year’s American Crystallographic Association meeting in Denver. In the picture are from left to right: Christine Beavers, Simon Morton, Diane Bryant, Stacey Ortega, Jay Nix, Corie Ralston:

The next test is to run the 501 and 502 Pilatus detectors simultaneously off the same PPU.