Motor Stage System

The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) is opening a new National Healthcare Photonics Centre (NHPC) based at the NETPark, Sedgefield, County Durham, UK in January 2019. The centre will provide facilities and expertise to help companies of all sizes to develop their photonics-based technologies for healthcare and turn them into commercially viable products. The NHPC will comprise a wide range of technical laboratories, including a radiation laboratory that is compatible with the use of both microfocus x-ray sources and liquid radioactive isotopes for the investigation and characterisation of various different sample types. This capability will allow samples to be interrogated whether they are directly related to the assessment of biological targets, or if they are related to the effect of radioactivity on materials that may be used within radioactive systems as part of a diagnostic or health monitoring capability.

The construction and commissioning of the new National Healthcare Photonics Centre will be completed by early 2019. The very wide, and currently undefined, remit for the laboratory work requires that the procurement of equipment must be carried out to allow a flexible and capable suite of capabilities to be put together. This flexibility will allow the National Healthcare Photonics Centre to provide the expertise and capability to assist SMEs in the characterisation and development of materials and techniques to be used in conjunction with radioactive sources.

The strategy to provide this assessment capability requires the procurement of a number of components. The microfocus x-ray source and detector will be one part of the capability set-up, the other part will be the suite of motor stages that will allow 360° interrogation of a sample without any manual movement of the sample being required.

The suite of motor stages will provide the core mechanical capability that will underpin the vast majority of the radiation work carried out within the lab and so it is imperative that all of the motor stages, controllers, and peripherals are compatible and can be programmed and run from the same control software. The control software will also be used to control the source exposure and to collect the output images and data from the detector.

Please refer to the following URL for access to the tender pack following registration;

https://ne1procurementservices.com