The crystallography beamlines at the ANSTO Australian Synchrotron (MX1 and MX2) continue to service the crystallographic communities of Australia and New Zealand. Soon a new beamline, MX3, will enter the suite and offer greater abilities to study smaller and more weakly diffracting crystals, as well as new capabilities for tray screening, unattended data collection and serial crystallography. Upgrades and continual development of MX1 and MX2 mean that dynamic crystallography experiments including high pressure in diamond anvil cells, photocrystallography, cold mounting, variable temperature and variable position experiments are now offered routinely to users.
This presentation will provide information on recent beamline updates and beamline developments planned for the next year. MX2 will be upgrading to a new Irelec robot and Arinax goniometer in August 2025 which will match the hardware in MX3, and require puck modifications and stricter pin requirements from existing users. MX1 will be installing a new mini-kappa goniometer head in Dec 2024, which will improve full sphere data collection and provide greater reliability. Beamline staff are working towards an automated fragment screening platform utilising a MiTeGen Crystal Shifter for crystal mounting and AI crystal auto-centering. High pressure crystallography and photocrystallography will also soon be offered on MX2, and nanosecond pulsed laser photocrystallography experiments will be developed on MX1. MX3 hot commissioning is underway, and the beamline is expected to start expert user experiments in early-mid 2025 and is looking for friendly users interested in contributing to this.