EXP 395P XRD Technician Report

Summary

EXP395P was scheduled to finish installing reentry cones for conduct minor coring for EXP390 and 393 but due to cases of Covid-19 among the crew and staff the Expedition was cancelled and the ship remained tieed-up in Cape Town with 6 IODP staff. The XRD technician was onboard for 1 week.

Projects

Ongoing - update the confluence layout for sample preparation for XRD and ICP samples. Sample preparation for each instrument was located within the instrument's manual, we thought it would be helpful if the sample preparation was separated from the manuals in a layout shown below. Please add the needed info into the Sample Preparation section.

Aeris XRD

Regular errors appeared nearly every 3 days after clearing an error (see a summary of error log here and download as an excel file). The errors occur when we are not exercising the machine daily. Exercising the machine daily (Feb 24 to March 7) prevented the errors. The errors were cleared by shutting down the XRD using the Green Button only on the right side of the display screen. There was one incident where the sample loader became stuck in the area where the window opens to allow the sample in and out of the instrument (became stuck on Feb 21 while restarting the instrument to clear an error from Feb 10). To clear that error, we powered off the the instrument and manually pushed the sample carrier into the instrument (gently push where the label says 'do not move by hand'). This allowed the door to close when the instrument was powered back on.

To access the Error Log and save files to USB follow instructions in the Aeris User guide Section 4.6.6. The error file is "panalytical.IMS.Server.log". The regular occurring errors are 1. Goniometer Tube Access Control and 2. Sample Changer Z-Axis Control.