Calibration and Implementation of Robot for Detection of X-rays

While industrial robots have traditionally been designed for tasks such as pick-and-place that require a high repeatability, an increasing demand for off-line control and high-precision applications have in recent decades put higher demands on the accuracy of robots. One application in that vain is the detection of X-rays that have been scattered from a sample during X-ray diffraction, which produces interference peaks of very well-defined angles. To that end, a robot has been installed at the MAX IV synchrotron facility with the intention of having it maneuvering an X-ray detector, and the aim of this thesis is thus to improve the pose accuracy of the robot to a level that is feasible for conducting such experiments. The robot’s kinematics is calibrated through means of an optical CMM, and the joint characteristics such as backlash, friction, and joint stiffness are identified by performing a clamping routine, where the robot’s end-effector is rigidly fixed to the environment. Furthermore, the calibrated model is implemented off-line in order to facilitate the control of the robot by means of the spherical coordinates that are commonly used in X-ray diffraction. The results show that the calibrated model achieved an accuracy of 180 mm, which is close to the anticipated value of 150 mm. This means that the robot is ready to be taken into operation, even though further attempts at improving the accuracy may be undertaken in the future

NanoMAX : The hard X-ray nanoprobe beamline at the MAX IV Laboratory

NanoMAX is the first hard X-ray nanoprobe beamline at the MAX IV laboratory. It utilizes the unique properties of the world's first operational multi-bend achromat storage ring to provide an intense and coherent focused beam for experiments with several methods. In this paper we present the beamline optics design in detail, show the performance figures, and give an overview of the surrounding infrastructure and the operational diffraction endstation

Design and performance of a dedicated coherent X-ray scanning diffraction instrument at beamline NanoMAX of MAX IV

The diffraction endstation of the NanoMAX beamline is designed to provide high-flux coherent X-ray nano-beams for experiments requiring many degrees of freedom for sample and detector. The endstation is equipped with high-efficiency Kirkpatrick-Baez mirror focusing optics and a two-circle goniometer supporting a positioning and scanning device, designed to carry a compact sample environment. A robot is used as a detector arm. The endstation, in continued development, has been in user operation since summer 2017