During your experiment, if you have any problem, you can call the local contact (dedicated business phone, or personal phone number if available) from 7am to 10 pm. If technical problems occur (vacuum, mechanical or electrical failure), do not try to fix them by yourself without agreement from the local contact. In case of emergency, call the hall operator (EHO) directly (phone: 25-25) or the ESRF control room (phone: 24-90).

In any case, you are not allowed to modify electric settings or try to fix electrical devices: if any action is necessary, it will be undertaken by the local contact himself or the technician on duty. However, for a general electric power problem, you can contact the hall operator (phone: 25-25).

Sample preparation

A preparation room at 20°C is available for the sample preparation. It includes

  • Leica microscopes with cold light sources.
  • cryo-tools (crystalcap HT, crystalwand magnetic), foam bowls, gloves and other accessories for samples flash freezing and handling.
  • ESRF-EMBL standard baskets (UNIPUCK) for the FIP sample changer robot.
  • A high pressure cell (up to 15 bars). It can be used to introduce in your crystal Krypton gas (the only one available on the beamline) or any non hazardous gaz (bring a bottle with you) prior to freezing. It requires that crystals are mounted on Hampton CrystalCap Copper.
  • A 4°C fridge and a -20°C freezer.
  • A 20°C vibration-free incubator for crystallization trays storage.

No chemical solvent, heavy atom salt, gas or acid are available. So bring any solution you may need with you, and do not forget to get it back at the end of the experiment as well as crystals. Special yellow bins are provided for specific waste (biological matters, sharp and pointed tools, needles, …….).

Sample mounting

Frozen sample holders (caps) can be mounted manually on the goniometer head. Alternatively, samples stored in ESRF-EMBL UNIPUCK baskets, can be placed in the sample changer Dewar (18 baskets at a time) for automated mounting with the Flex-HCD sample changer.

In case of crystals frozen in propane, mounting the crystal on the goniometer is simple: put the tube full of solid propane on the goniometer head and wait for the phase change (solid propane-liquid propane) and then remove the tube.

Data collection and data storage

Like all MX beamlines at ESRF, the FIP2 data are automatically loaded on the /data drives and pre-processed by the ISPyB system.

Data reduction

In addition to the ESRF HPC servers, a powerfull processing PC is available on FIP2. You can perform data reduction / analysis. Available software are XDS, xdsme and MOSFLM. Usual data processing suites (CCP4) are also available.