If you'd asked me earlier today to predict what I would've done for the day, I would have been totally wrong.

Today was certainly a difficult day at the beamline. Finally we got all the problems with the beamline and hutch under control. This moved us on to the problems we needed to solve with our experiments. As I said earlier, I hate Roper Scientific. These people are not even the least bit afraid that there might be a hell. Anyhow, we've had nightmarish problems with our computer talking to the ccd camera. The eventual solution was to take out the high-end digital electronics and fiber optic cable. This solved our last communication problem, but left us with a new one.... Our cables are a bit short.

In fact all USB cables are a bit short as they just do not make anything long enough for what we need. The problem is that the CCD camera needs to be inside the hutch with the x-rays and the computer needs to be outside the hutch with us. Humans and x-rays don't play well in the same room together. That's something you learn being an x-ray physicist. They teach you that in school.... never go in the hutch with the x-rays.

The eventual solution has the CCD and its electronics in the hutch with a long cable on the floor to our computer (inside the hutch still). However, the computer is close to a "rabbit hole" to the outside. In fact, it's close enough that I got the cables for the monitor, keyboard, and mouse through the hole and intro the hutch. It just means that the "control" center for the experiment sits on the concrete floor. So be it.

Our next problem, still not 100% solved, has been temperature control of the sample. The stage has a heat sink, but it does not dissipate heat quickly enough to be useful. I salvaged a few computer fans from trashed/junked computers, powered them, and stuck them under the stage. That sort of worked but not enough... So I got a liquid nitrogen dewar, filled it after only 2 minor fiascos, and took copper cord to the sample block to act as a sink for the heat. That also worked, though still only sort of... and not enough...

At this point we pulled the entire stage off in favor of putting an older cryostat assembly into the diffractometer. One entertaining bit is that it uses high pressure helium lines for the cooling. Anyhow, the cryostat didn't fit well into the diffractometer as at some point, someone had smashed the threads. We spent another hour fixing some rather onerous screw threads before the new/old stage could be assembled. But now it's there and sort of working. we'll see...