FaME38 is no more! From the start of this year the laboratory has become an official ILL-ESRF owned support laboratory and has been renamed as the Material Science Support Laboratory.

Furthermore, the laboratory now has a dedicated ILL technical responsible and has undergone an update, with the equipment being improved and rearranged. The web-site shows a full list of services and equipment available and can be viewed at www.ill.eu/others/mssl

The laboratory is available to users but also to ILL staff, providing a range of services such as sample cutting/potting/polishing, hardness testing, tensile testing and the use of a microscope, together with high-precision measurement (including portable measuring system). Recent examples of its internal use are the testing of the rotation bearings for the new gamma-spectrometer  “GAMS6” and measuring the alignment of the array of crystals on the IN8 monochromator. If you have any questions about high precision measurements then come and see us before contracting the work outside!

S. Rowe and D. J. Hughes