correcting shift in spectra for our Tracer SD-III

[Vanessa Muros]

Hi everyone,

Our Tracer SD-III has recently started displaying the spectra (during acquisition and when viewing previously collected spectra) with a shift.  I contacted Bruker for help and was told that this Tracer model (along with the III-V+ and the SD-IV) reached their "end of life" at the end of 2021 and will no longer be serviced.  https://www.bruker.com/en/services/product-end-of-life/elemental-analyzers.html

I know how to temporarily correct the shift after the data has been acquired but in the past Bruker has fixed it so that the correction was permanent, meaning that the data was always collected and viewed without the shift.  Does anyone have instructions for how we can do this ourselves?  I wasn't aware about the end of life of these older units and that they were no longer going to be serviced, so I am not sure how to go about getting the older models repaired now.  Buying a new unit right now is not a financially feasible option.

Any help with this issue would be greatly appreciated.

best,

Vanessa

---

Vanessa Muros, PhD

Archaeological Conservator & Director,

Experimental and Archaeological Sciences Lab (EASL)

Cotsen Institute, UCLA

A419 Fowler Building

Los Angeles, CA 90095-1510

vmu...@ucla.edu

http://ioa.ucla.edu/labs/experimental

https://ioa.ucla.edu/people/vanessa-muros

https://spark.ucla.edu/archaeology

The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA acknowledges the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (the Los Angeles basin and So. Channel Islands). As a land grant institution, we pay our respects to the Honuukvetam (Ancestors), ‘Ahiihirom (Elders) and ‘Eyoohiinkem (our relatives/relations) past, present and emerging.

[Lee Drake]

Hi Vanessa,

So good news and bad news. 

Good news is that the spectra can be corrected after the fact. A tutorial on how to do so is here: 

https://www.xrf.guru/Tutorials/GainShiftTutorial/index.html

Bad news is it is hard to find anyone who knows how to fix it. I did it once with heavy handholding a decade ago, but even then I’d never trust myself to do then. If the fix is done wrong, it will permanently disable the instrument. I can try reaching out to the former service employees to see if they’d be willing to do these corrections on contract. But the risk of the fix going wrong is always there, and is probably higher since even the folks who used to do it are out of practice and wouldn’t enjoy the liability protections of a giant corporation. 

Also a quick note on XRF.guru - a lot of folks reached out regarding tutorials and videos that were not working, but they worked fine for others. I found the problem was that browsers were implementing https security differently, so some would block the older http links. I think I’ve got it fixed in the last update, but if tutorials don’t work please let me know. 

- Lee

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[Sanders, Douglas H]

It is good timing for this question Vanessa. The same thing is happening with our Bruker Elio. The elemental peaks are generally a consistent two to three channels lower energy (ie. to the left) than where they should be, given published Ka and Kb data as well as the automatic analysis fit that the Bruker software applies to the spectrum.

 

We tend to do a lot of work with raw channel values, exported as .csv files. The shift correction could easily be done with those numbers, but I’d like to know what’s going on. Is it an instrument calibration issue, or is there physics at play with our samples and how they respond to XRF energies.  We are working with characterizing ivory.

 

Thank you,

Doug Sanders

 

Douglas Sanders

Paper Conservator

 

IU Libraries Preservation

ALF Building, 140H

2850 E. Discovery Parkway

Bloomington, IN 47408

 

812-856-4463

 

 

 

From: px...@googlegroups.com <px...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Vanessa Muros
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2023 11:59 AM
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Subject: [External] [pxrf] correcting shift in spectra for our Tracer SD-III

 

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[Elton]

Hi Vanessa, 

Please, find the tutorial file @ Energy Calibrations.pptx (Source:XRFGuru website https://www.xrf.guru/Tutorials/GainShiftTutorial/index.html )

I hope this can help you.

Regards,

[Vanessa Muros]

Hi Lee,

Thanks for the response, even if it is bad news!

I have used the tutorial you put up on xrf.guru to correct the data, since we've had this issue before (BTW thanks so much for having that up there. It's been so helpful!). But I was hoping that maybe there was a way to correct it so we didn't have to do that.  Since I've done analysis before, I can ID most of the peaks even with the shift, but it's hard for some of the students who use it to do that without the post acquisition correction, which can slow things down, sometimes not ideal when you have a limited amount of time to access collection items.   I guess for now we just need to collect the data and correct afterwards, and hope that we find funds to purchase a new unit.

Thanks again!

best,

Vanessa

---

Vanessa Muros, PhD

Archaeological Conservator & Director,

Experimental and Archaeological Sciences Lab (EASL)

Cotsen Institute, UCLA

A419 Fowler Building

Los Angeles, CA 90095-1510

vmu...@ucla.edu

http://ioa.ucla.edu/labs/experimental

https://ioa.ucla.edu/people/vanessa-muros

https://spark.ucla.edu/archaeology

The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA acknowledges the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (the Los Angeles basin and So. Channel Islands). As a land grant institution, we pay our respects to the Honuukvetam (Ancestors), ‘Ahiihirom (Elders) and ‘Eyoohiinkem (our relatives/relations) past, present and emerging.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pxrf/CAEvfoRQy9Kr89nmfuycOPSwzyVYuWmb63zCqF3X%2BFfos1hzn2w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Celia Cramer]

Ps 

Now I have had a coffee , the message says "not found on this server"

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pxrf/CAEvfoRQy9Kr89nmfuycOPSwzyVYuWmb63zCqF3X%2BFfos1hzn2w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Celia Cramer]

Bringing further bad news Lee, ... the tutorial link and I are not compatible (ie message unless no longer exists)

Celia 

On Thu, 20 Apr 2023, 2:16 am Lee Drake, <b.lee...@gmail.com> wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pxrf/CAEvfoRQy9Kr89nmfuycOPSwzyVYuWmb63zCqF3X%2BFfos1hzn2w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Aaron Shugar]

Vanessa,

There are still one or two people in service that know how to fix this, the problem is that the software used to fix the problem is Excel based and it does not work on almost any new computers. The last time I had to get this fixed, service kindly FedExed me a laptop that would run the software, they then had to remote in and do their magic.  I was able to follow along, but I would never be able to do this myself. Try giving them a call and talking over the phone. Maybe they will be willing to try.

Otherwise, as Lee suggests, you can always just have a folder with one corrected file, and make a batch change on all new spectra collected.

Aaron

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pxrf/CAODzO-AbkBrhS2qPHG1_q7LMm_Fanumsxh-hNLu%2BN1%3DYU3TXMg%40mail.gmail.com.

--

Aaron Shugar
aaron....@gmail.com
shug...@buffalostate.edu