Shimadzu EPMA instruments

[Probeman]

This board is for discussion of Shimadzu hardware (and software).  Probe Software does not support the Shimadzu EPMA instrument, but to be fair it makes sense to provide a forum for Shimadzu EPMA users, just in case any would like to share information or questions about their EPMA instruments.

Interestingly, my first EPMA instrument was an ARL SEMQ at UC Berkeley. The ARL SEMQ was an American made EPMA instrument during the 1970s and 1980s. But the company was bought by Bausch and Lomb and later sold off in the late 1980s. For the record, very early versions of the Probe software actually supported the ARL SEMQ instrument, through a computer hardware interface developed at UC Berkeley by myself and John Friday (now retired).

Now you might ask, what does this have to do with a Shimadzu instrument? But in fact the Shimadzu EPMA instrument, with it's unusual 52.5 deg takeoff angle and six tunable spectrometer layout, is originally based on the ARL SEMQ instrument. In fact, the rights to the ARL instrument division were sold to Advanced Microbeam (USA) and Shimadzu (Japan) many years ago.

Now some of you might have noticed that Probe for EPMA still has support for six tunable spectrometers in its various dialogs (it used to support fixed monochromators tuned to specific emission lines, but no longer!):



And that was because of the early support for a 6 spectrometer ARL instrument, which Shimadzu currently makes. Here is a topic on EPMA history where I discuss some history of this instrument:

https://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=924.0

and here is a web page I found with some old pictures from a publication by Rinaldi and Llovet:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-more-modern-American-microprobe-of-the-mid-1970s-ARL-SEMQ-at-the-beginning-of_fig2_284187581

I'll try and find some old pictures of my own and scan them... In the meantime for those unfamiliar with the modern Shimadzu EPMA instrument, here is their web page:

https://www.shimadzu.com/an/surface/epma/epma1720.html

[Probing]

Can we make it compatible with SHIMADZU instruments just by adjusting the "take off" to 52.5？

[John Donovan]

Can we make it compatible with SHIMADZU instruments just by adjusting the "take off" to 52.5？

One can certainly edit the takeoff field in Probe for EPMA for 52.5 degrees, as the software was originally written for the ARL SEMQ microprobe, which had a takeoff angle of 52.5 degrees and was what the modern Shimadzu instrument is based on.

Here is an old picture of me on the ARL SEMQ instrument:



On that ARL instrument the Probe for EPMA instrument interface was based on PC boards for ISA (originally) and PCI (later) boards for motion control, pulse counting and A/D and D/A for imaging. However these boards became harder and harder to source and eventually as JEOL (8900) and Cameca (SX100) came out with (TCP/IP) network based instruments, Probe for EPMA dropped support for the ARL SEMQ instrument and was modified for TCP/IP interfacing. Though as shown in the previous post, PFE still (in theory) supports a 6 spectrometer instrument!

So while one can configure Probe for EPMA for a 6 spectrometer 52.5 degree takeoff angle instrument there is currently no network communication interface for the Shimadzu instrument. At one time we had some discussions with Shimadzu as to whether they could provide a TCP/IP network based interface, as we have for the JEOL and Cameca instruments, but it seems that their instrument interface is, like the old ARL SEMQ, based on PCI boards in a single PC, though that could have changed since our discussions many years ago.

It would be possible to add an additional instrument interface to Probe for EPMA, but I am afraid that network interface does not exist on the Shimadzu instrument. Basically a TCP/IP network interface is required in order for multiple computers to connect to and control the instrument at the same time.

[Probing]

Thanks for sharing the story about the  ARL SEMQ, SHIMADZU, PFE and the  links between them, I really appreciate it.