Abstract

The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) is the oldest and most powerful 3rd generation synchrotron in Europe, providing X-rays to more than 40 experimental stations welcoming several thousand researchers per year. A major success story has been the ESRF's facilities for macromolecular crystallography (MX). These are grouped around 3 straight sections: On ID23 canted undulators accommodate ID23-1, a mini-focus tuneable energy end station and ID23-2, the world's first micro-focus beamline dedicated to MX; ID29 houses a single, mini-focus, tuneable energy end station; ID30 will provide three end stations for MX due in operation from mid-2014 to early 2015. Here, one branch of a canted X-ray source feeds two fixed-energy end stations (MASSIF-1, MASSIF-3). The second feeds ID30B, a variable focus, tuneable energy beamline. MASSIF-1 is optimised for automatic high-throughput experiments requiring a relatively large beam size at the sample position, MASSIF-3 is a high-intensity, micro-focus facility designed to complement ID23-2. All end stations are highly automated, equipped with sample mounting robots and large area, fast-readout photon-counting detectors. Experiment control and tracking is achieved via a combination of the MXCuBE2 graphical user interface and the ISPyB database, the former allowing user-friendly control of all beamline components, the latter providing data tracking before, after and during experiments.

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