All Applications of the ALBA Skin Concept

During the ALBA design phase, the protein macromolecular protein crystallography beamline, XALOC, required several in-house developments. The major part of these designs was at the end station where the necessity of customization is always much higher. The most relevant of these instruments was the beam conditioning elements table [1]. This accurate stage, which supports the diffractometer as well, includes the four movements required to align the components to the nominal beam as well as position the diffractometer. This design compacts, especially the vertical and pitch movements, both in a single stage, with a couple of stages for all four excursions. The solution maximise the stiffness and preserves at the same time the resolution close to 0.1��m while being able to withstand a half tone of payload. Thanks this compactness and performances this design concept, the vertical and pitch combined stage, was not only applied at XALOC for its diffractometer and detector table, but it has been widely adapted at several ALBA beamlines: at NCD-SWEET [2] as a detector table, a beam conditioning elements table [3] and sample table, at MSPD beamline as the KB table, at NOTOS beamline as metrology table, and also at the new ESA MINERVA beamline [4] for their sample mirror modules positioning. Beamlines have not been the only beneficiaries of this design, also different kind of instrumentation like an hall probe measuring bench [5], and even a stitching platform for the ALBA optics laboratory [6]. Moreover, the concept has outreach ALBA and has been adopted also at other facilities worldwide, synchrotrons and also scientific instrumentation suppliers around Europe. This poster presents most of the applications of the skin concept and their variations and main measured performances.
Proceedings of the 11th Mechanical Engineering Design of Synchrotron Radiation Equipment and Instrumentation, MEDSI2020, Chicago, IL, USA