Flexible positioning of a large area detector using an industrial robot

The DIAD beamline for Dual Imaging and Diffraction at Diamond Light Source has opted to use an industrial robot to position its Dectris Pilatus 2M CdTe diffraction detector. This setup was chosen to enable flexible positioning of the detector in a quarter-sphere around the sample position whilst reliably holding the large weight of 139 kg of detector, detector mount and cabling in a stable position. Metrology measurements showed that the detector can be positioned with a linear repeatability of < 19.7 mu m and a rotational repeatability of < 16.3 mu rad. The detector position stays stable for a 12 h period with < 10.1 mu m of movement for linear displacement and < 3.8 mu rad for rotational displacement. X-ray diffraction from calibration samples confirmed that the robot is sufficiently stable to resolve lattice d-spacings within the instrumental broadening given by detector position and beam divergence.