Innovative Delta Robot Sample Scanner

Synchrotron Endstations typically use a stack of coarse and fine motion stages to position and scan a sample in the beam. The serial nature of this design causes a low resonant frequency and hence limits the position stability. The combination of multiple stages also adds motion control and data analysis complexity. A large range parallel kinematic cartesian sample scanner has been designed, built, tested and installed to address these limitations. The stage combines a 3 mm travel range with < 3 nm RMS position jitter in the scan directions and < 1 nm/minute thermal drift during scanning. This paper describes and demonstrates the mechatronic design process of Dynamic Error Budgeting. The stage is installed and fully operational on beamline I14 at the Diamond Light Source being used for nanoscale XRF mapping, imaging and ptychography.