Automation of the mounting of cryocooled samples is now a feature of the majority of beamlines dedicated to macromolecular crystallography (MX). Robotic sample changers have been developed over many years, with the latest designs increasing capacity, reliability and speed. Here, the development of a new sample changer deployed at the ESRF beamline MASSIF-1 (ID30A-1), based on an industrial six-axis robot, is described. The device, named RoboDiff, includes a high-capacity dewar, acts as both a sample changer and a high-accuracy goniometer, and has been designed for completely unattended sample mounting and diffraction data collection. This aim has been achieved using a high level of diagnostics at all steps of the process from mounting and characterization to data collection. The RoboDiff has been in service on the fully automated endstation MASSIF-1 at the ESRF since September 2014 and, at the time of writing, has processed more than 20 000 samples completely automatically.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4973212PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S205979831601158XDOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

sample changer
12
macromolecular crystallography
8
data collection
8
sample
5
robodiff combining
4
combining sample
4
changer goniometer
4
goniometer highly
4
highly automated
4
automated macromolecular
4

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!