MX3¶
Macromolecular crystallography at the Australian Synchrotron: rotation MX on an MD3 microdiffractometer reading a DECTRIS Eiger, with an ISARA robot for unattended sample exchange. This page describes how CORA would model and run MX3; the model is reverse-engineered from public configuration, not yet confirmed by Australian Synchrotron staff.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Asset | MX3 (root Asset, tier = Unit, parent_id = None) |
| Facility | Australian Synchrotron (bound via facility_code = "as", FacilityKind = Site) |
| Sector | PV namespace MX3* (storage ring at SR11*) |
| Institution | ANSTO, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (context; not modeled as an Asset) |
| Status | Reverse-engineered from public config (design-phase scaffold) |
| Source | insertion device (understood to be an undulator, unconfirmed; PV not in the public library, SRC-1) |
How CORA would land on MX3
These pages describe how CORA would model, govern, and conduct MX3, the first beamline of CORA's sixth Site, the Australian Synchrotron. They are not a survey of the beamline's current software. The hardware facts (devices, EPICS PVs, control interfaces) are read from public open source (the AustralianSynchrotron/mx3-beamline-library device library) and verified against it; vendor part numbers and physical positions are not in it, so they, and every read value, are carried confirm until staff verify them (Open questions). This is a design-phase scaffold: the descriptor and these docs, with scenarios deferred.
The defining shape: a new Site, a heterogeneous control plane¶
MX3 brings CORA to a sixth Site (the first Australian facility) and, with it, a control plane unlike any prior deployment's. Most MX3 devices are EPICS-PV-bound (the storage ring at SR11*, the beamline at MX3*, with literal in-code PVs), but three first-class subsystems sit on their own control planes:
- the MD3 microdiffractometer goniometer over the MXCuBE Exporter protocol (TCP),
- the DECTRIS Eiger over the SIMPLON REST API (HTTP), the first non-EPICS area detector in the fleet,
- the ISARA robot over a TCP client library.
The value to CORA is twofold: it re-tests that the Site / Federation kernel ports to a new facility (as SLAC did), and it stresses the seam, CORA's ControlPort must span EPICS, Exporter, and REST at once. The technique, rotation MX, is not new (Diamond I03 brought it), so MX3 introduces no new catalog Family and reuses i03's Goniometer and MX Methods.
The beamline¶
Along the beam, in order:
- Source: the storage-ring current monitor and the front-end shutter (the undulator source PV is not in the library, SRC-1), then the optics, the double-multilayer monochromator, the master energy axis, and the attenuator.
- Sample: the MD3 microdiffractometer goniometer, the cryojet cooling, the backlight, and the beamstop, plus the ISARA sample-exchange robot.
- Detector: the DECTRIS Eiger (over SIMPLON REST), its translation stage, the on-axis viewing camera, the flux monitor, and the beam-position / steering monitor.
Cutting across all three:
- Controls: the shutters, the motion controllers, and the heterogeneous control-plane seam.
The cross-cutting reference view is the Inventory.
Techniques¶
Techniques: the rotation-MX techniques MX3 runs (data collection, grid scan, autonomous sample exchange), each reusing a pending Diamond i03 Method.
Governance¶
Governance: who may act at MX3 and the trust shape CORA applies; CORA brings its own per-Actor authority.
Model¶
Model: the developer's by-kind index into where each CORA aggregate's MX3 content lives.