24-ID-C Monochromater Modifications

During the last day of 2012-2 run cycle, while testing the beamline optics for 150mA ring current operations, we noticed that the temperature of the second crystal of 24-ID-C double-crystal-monochromator increased more rapidly than expected.  During the September shutdown changes were made to improve the heat transfer between the cooling block and the crystal. Mainly, the second crystal was remounted on the cooling block using cryogenic grease, instead of indium eutectic.  At the same time, the thermocouples were remounted. This should reduce excursions of the beam during gap changes, in addition to stabilizing the beam in general.

Beamline Computers OS Upgrade

In anticipation of the end-of-support for the Windows XP operating system (OS), during the past year we ported the beamline control CONSOLE program to 64-Bit Windows 7 OS. Extensive tests were carried out to assure a stable operation in this new OS. During the September shutdown, the computers running the Master and Auxiliary control scripts were upgraded to 64-Bit Windows 7 on both beamlines.

Faster Data Transfer from PILATUS via a Dedicated Compute Server Installation

To transfer data from the PILATUS computer to our data storage filesystem, we use a software called FURKA.  FURKA is developed and provided by Dectris, the manufacturer of the PILATUS. This software was originally installed directly on a non-dedicated local computer handling the GPFS file system.  We were aware that this caused occasional loss of data frames.  Recently Dectris delivered a dedicated data transfer compute server, called the PILATUS processing unit (PPU). The PPU is a high-end server which provides massive processing power and dedicated software packages, such as FURKA, custom built for file transfer from the PILATUS. The PPU is designed to interface beamline IT infrastructures with modern RHEL-based operating systems such as CentOS.  It comes with the latest compilers and a pre-installed 10Gbit/s high-speed network card (SFP+).  The PPU also has a large ramdisk which will buffer the incoming data before sending it out to the gpfs file system.  This will both provide an increased rate of file transfer as well as improve reliability of the data transfer. During the commissioning, we were able to collect thousands of data frames at 25Hz without any loss.