Occasionally we hear from a customer that Probe for EPMA is all of a sudden not changing crystals to the correct selected crystal on a spectrometer. And though this has only happened once or twice in our experience, it always seems to happen right after a visit from a JEOL service engineer... strange, right?
Well it turns out that the one or two times this has happened, the JEOl engineer had decided to change the order of the Bragg crystals in a spectrometer without telling anyone!
The reason it occurs is because on a JEOL EPMA the crystal is selected by the order number of the crystal on a spectrometer (unlike Cameca where one actually send the name of the crystal to change to). So if the crystal order is changed in the spectrometer, the wrong crystal is selected!
But the solution is pretty simple. Just open the JEOL software and view the offending spectrometer configuration as seen here:
(https://smf.probesoftware.com/gallery/1_16_11_24_9_32_38.png)
The crystal order on the JEOL can be found in the JEOL software on the second (middle) monitor which is used for quant analysis, at the top menu under Maintenance > SPC Configuration. Select the spectrometer (channel) and click the drop down list to see the crystal order on that spectrometer.
Then open the SCALERS.DAT file in the C:\ProgramData\Probe Software\Probe for EPMA folder with a TEXT editor such as NotePad (after making a backup copy of your SCALERS.DAT!!!), and edit the crystals to reflect the order seen in the JEOL software:
"1" "2" "3" "4" "5" "scaler labels"
"" "" "" "" "" "fixed scaler elements"
"" "" "" "" "" "fixed scaler x-rays"
3 3 3 3 3 "crystal flipping flag"
85. 85. 85. 85. 85. "crystal flipping position"
2 2 4 2 2 "number of crystals"
"PET" "LIFH" "PET" "PET" "LIF" "crystal types1"
"TAP" "PETH" "TAP" "TAP" "PET" "crystal types2"
"" "" "WSI60" "" "" "crystal types3"
"" "" "NiCrBN" "" "" "crystal types4"
"" "" "" "" "" "crystal types5"
"" "" "" "" "" "crystal types6"
1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 "deadtime in microseconds"
60. 60. 40. 60. 60. "off-peak size, (hilimit - lolimit)/off-peak size"
40. 40. 30. 40. 40. "wavescan size, (hilimit - lolimit)/wavescan size"
Save the changes you made to the SCALERS.DAT and you should be good to go (be sure to re-start Probe for EPMA to make sure the changes are loaded in...