Electron Beam Alignment for Thermo Fisher Scientific

Benefits for the customer and end-users:

• 50% time reduction on electron source assembly during the manufacturing process.
• Procedure automation enabling repeatability and reusability of the setting-up process between different models of electron microscopes.
• Thanks to our solution, the end users observe a 66% reduction in downtime during machine preset.
• Automation decreased demand for users’ technical skills. The microscope can be operated by a broader range of end users bringing more revenue to the manufacturer.

Electron microscopes use a wolfram filament as a source of electrons. The source can be compared to a light bulb filament; both are subject to wear and tear and need to be exchanged in time. In our case, it’s after approximately 100 hours of use. Due to production tolerance, individual electron emitters can slightly differ; therefore, each user must repeat the aligning procedure.

The alignment consists of two parts: setting filament temperature and adjusting beam direction. Before automation, both steps used to be done manually. Our software removes the need for manual setup and makes the results correct and repeatable. In order to complete the task, we first collaborated with Thermo Fisher on the physics of the solution. The following technical and mathematical algorithms have been developed at Edhouse. We have also implemented all necessary measurements and completed all validation and verification tasks.