Thermo Max Energy and Pulse Processing Interface

[John Donovan]

Probe for EPMA now supports the Thermo maximum energy (x-axis) and pulse processing width (in nano-seconds) interface from the Acquire! | Acquisition Options dialog as seen here:



To enable, simply change the following keyword in the [hardware] section of your Probewin.ini file as seen here:

[hardware]
EDSMaxEnergyThroughputPresent=1

[John Donovan]

Just an update to the Thermo Max Energy and Process Time parameters that are found in the Probe for EPMA Acquisition Options dialog here:



First it should be noted that the max energy selections are 5 to 80 keV (5, 10, 20, 40, and 80 keV) in Thermo NSS, but the new Thermo Pathfinder software allows a value of zero, which indicates automatic selection of the appropriate maximum energy scale in the X axis.

If you started with Thermo NSS and then upgraded to Pathfinder, you might not see the zero value selection for max energy in the acquisition options. In this case open your Probewin.ini file in any text editor (e.g., NotePad) and find these keywords in the [hardware] section and edit them as required:

For Thermo NSS:
MaxEnergyArraySize=5
MaxEnergyArrayValue1="5"
MaxEnergyArrayValue2="10"
MaxEnergyArrayValue3="20"
MaxEnergyArrayValue4="40"
MaxEnergyArrayValue5="80"

For Thermo Pathfinder:
MaxEnergyArraySize=6
MaxEnergyArrayValue1="5"
MaxEnergyArrayValue2="10"
MaxEnergyArrayValue3="20"
MaxEnergyArrayValue4="40"
MaxEnergyArrayValue5="80"
MaxEnergyArrayValue5="0"      ; 0 = auto for Pathfinder

For both Thermo NSS and Pathfinder these are the pulse process times:
MaxThroughputArraySize=11
MaxThroughputArrayValue1="200"
MaxThroughputArrayValue2="400"
MaxThroughputArrayValue3="600"
MaxThroughputArrayValue4="800"
MaxThroughputArrayValue5="1000"
MaxThroughputArrayValue6="1600"
MaxThroughputArrayValue7="2000"
MaxThroughputArrayValue8="3200"
MaxThroughputArrayValue9="4000"
MaxThroughputArrayValue10="6400"
MaxThroughputArrayValue11="0"             ; 0 = auto for NSS or Pathfinder

Be sure also that the EDSMaxEnergyThroughputPresent=1 flag is set in the probewin.ini file to utilize these EDS interfaces.

Finally it should be noted that the process times available are 200 (nsec) to 6400 nsec) and that a zero process time indicates automatic adjustment of the process time.  However, the automatic process time option should *not* be utilized for quantitative EDS. More discussion on process time and quantitative EDS spectrum acquisition is found here:

https://smf.probesoftware.com/index.php?topic=939.msg8735#msg8735