Mechanical Engineering Center’s Masterpiece: Adapter for Sample Storage in Liquid Nitrogen Dewar

(English translation 2024-05-17)

At the Photon Factory of the Institute of Materials Structure Science, there are five beamlines dedicated to protein x-ray crystallography analysis, and user’s experiments are conducted. These beamlines are equipped with sample exchange robots, allowing for the automatic exchange of samples (protein crystals) upon command from a PC. The samples need to be sent to KEK before the experiment. The samples are sent in containers known as Uni-Pack. When setting these Uni-Pack with samples to the robot, they are placed in an L-shaped adapter (Fig. 2). After placing them in the L-shaped adapter, they are stored inside the liquid nitrogen dewar as shown in Figure 3. This arrangement allows the samples to be stored and readily available and rapid exchange of users is possible.
Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, users are able to conduct remote experiments, leading to an increase of samples sent to KEK. To accommodate a larger number of samples stored inside the liquid nitrogen dewar, we have increased the quantity of L-shaped adapters. Consequently, we have received a request to manufacture 40 hanging fixtures for storing these additional L-shaped adapters. Fig. 1 is a photo showing a part of the fixture we produced. The fixture was made of aluminum to reduce weight, but to mitigate heat infiltration, we used glass fiber-reinforced plastic (GFRP) in the green section of the shaft.