IMCA-CAT News

JDirector 2.2.1_imca21 has been released. This update adds support for vector data collection as well as other improvements.

• Made Phi jog control display the position and jog magnitude with a number of decimal places appropriate for the precision of the Phi axis.
• Added a no-spaces-in-path validation rule for scan templates.
• Improved robot error messages.
• Improved communication with the diffraction center subprocess when it first starts up ensuring it has enough time to start up before needing to respond to commands.
• Improved how the diffraction center dialog is opened and closed to try to avoid a difficult to reproduce system resource leak.
• Added support for vector data collection (a.k.a. collect along a vector).
• Improved scan validation error messages.
• Made the scan template of recipe editor scans default to the sample image directory.
• Fixed a stack overflow error when saving or restoring a schedule.
• Added support for the PILATUS_1.2 CBF image header format.
• Fixed the scan exposure time validator to not allow negative exposure times.
• Improved the scan editor to align controls better and be easier to read and navigate.
• Added an expansion of the scan template below the scan template in the scan editor to make it easy to see what the scan template will expand to.

The 5 micron mini-quad collimator assembly has been modified to replace the 300 micron scatter guard with a 50 micron beam-defining pinhole and is available for use. The new suite of pinhole sizes in this assembly is 50, 20, 10 and 5 microns. At this time the default assembly will be the 300, 50, 20, 10 micron pinhole set. Please notify staff prior to your experiment if you prefer to use the 5 micron set so that we can make the switch at start-up.

All three sample dewars are now available for use.

Sample Dewar #2 has a broken sensor and is unavailable until it is replaced. The sensor is a switch that tells the robot that the plug for the lid is in the proper position. Hopefully this will be resolved Tuesday during this weeks maintenance day.

JDirector 2.2.1_imca18 has been released. This update includes several stability fixes as well as other improvements.

• Made manual diffraction centering stop if the subprocess exits or hangs.
• Made manual diffraction centering responsive to being stopped in more situations, and improved how it stops the subprocess to decrease the chance of leaving the beamline in an inconsistent state.
• Improved how the diffraction center step in auto mode executes the diffraction centering subprocess, and added capturing of the standard error output of the subprocess if a failure occurred.
• Made the diffraction center step in auto mode interruptible. Previously, no steps were interruptible; a job could only be stopped after a step completed. Now a job can be stopped in the middle of a diffraction center step. This is helpful if a diffraction center step hangs. (Of course this should never happen, but if it does, at least now there is a good way to stop it.)

JDirector 2.2.1_imca17 has been released. This update introduces advanced diffraction centering features as well as other improvements.

• Added diffraction center support for choosing the analysis package (e.g. LABELIT or d*TREK) used for analyzing (including scoring) diffraction center images.
• Added diffraction center support for configuring the following analysis parameters: high and low resolution cutoff, minimum spot area, and minimum signal height.
• Made diffraction center raster cells selectable on the result view, and added a detail view showing analysis properties (e.g. spot total, good Bragg candidate total, etc.) for the selected cell.
• Added diffraction center raster result analysis property drop-down enabling selection of what property is displayed in the raster result view. Previously, a score was displayed. Now the displayed value can be the score, spot total, good Bragg candidates total, or total integrated signal. The score is not exactly the same as before. Before, the score was a scaled score between 0 and 100, but now it is not scaled.
• Made the generated HTML result file display scores as they appear in the GUI. That is, they are the unscaled scores as displayed in the GUI, not scaled scores between 0 and 100.
• Changed diffraction center configuration to indicate "None" for an optional value that has been unchecked rather than showing the value grayed out. This better communicates that no value is being specified. For example, if detector distance is unchecked, it now shows "None" for its value, indicating that the detector distance will not be moved.
• Improved diffraction center configuration descriptive text, labels, layout, and window resize behavior.
• Improved diffraction center subprocess communication when subprocess terminates prematurely.

The XBPM has been re-calibrated and positional feedback can be used.

Limited testing at 94% attenuation has shown that when the beam is moved to the edge of the camera region at 5x magnification, the beam will be returned to the predefined origin.

Please keep in mind that at high attenuation, the reported beam position will not be accurate and the beam may be moved away from the defined origin. This can be tested by turning off feedback, moving to the required attenuation and observing if the reported position deviates significantly from that reported with standard attenuation (94%). If this occurs, leave the positional feedback off until returning to a lower level of attenuation.

If problems are noticed with beam drift or any malfunction of the positional feedback system, please notify the staff.

The steering performed by the APS at the beginning of the run caused a somewhat significant change in the beam profile delivered by the mirrors to the sample. As the XBPM is very sensitive to the beam profile, the automated feedback has not been functional this run.

Continued consultation with Instrumentation Technologies and Dectris has suggested that the profile change was enough that the XBPM needs to be re-calibrated. A quick test of this on Feb 18 showed this to be the case.

Recalibration will be attempted on Feb 23, after which the beam feedback should be functional.