Wide-angle monochromatic x-ray beam shutter: a design study

A novel design of a wide-angle monochromatic x-ray beam shutter is discussed. The shutter is designed as a compact unit capable of providing users with the means of shutting off the beam in secondary beamlines that are at an angle to the primary beamline and to each other. The single-unit design used the fact that all the secondary beamlines will be closed at the same time. The main challenge was to fit the shutter in the limited space of the existing Advanced Photon Source IMMW-CAT hutch. Space limitations led to the change in position of the actuator subassembly as compared to the standard shutter design. Although the actuator subassembly is placed underneath the shutter, fail-safe shutting is achieved by placing tungsten blocks above the beam while the shutter is open and using gravity to close the shutter in case of pneumatic failure. Redundancy required by safety concerns was achieved by duplicating the tungsten block/actuator subunits. Tungsten blocks of uneven length were used to counteract the increase in the center-to-center distance among secondary beamlines due to their angular offset. A special support table was designed to facilitate assembly and adjustability of the shutter position in the available space. To provide a radiation-tight hutch, a nonstandard guillotine system was designed. In this paper, the design, specifications and optical ray tracing of the shutter assembly are presented.