A simple heating attachment suitable for taking x-ray precession photographs at high temperatures is described. It consists of a platinum wire-wound heater, split at the middle for sample insertion and x-ray irradiation. The heater is mounted on a quartzsupport and is independant of both the goniometer head and collimator. This makes crystal mounting and alignment at high temperature as easy as at room temperature and precession photographs up to precession angle$$\bar \mu = 30^ \circ $$=30° can be taken without any interference from the heater assembly, up to 1000°C.

A 2-D multi-wire position sensitive detector for X-ray diffraction and small angle X-ray scattering studies is described. The detector has an active area of 100 mm × 100 mm and consists of an anode plane with 10 µm SS wires at 3 mm spacing and a pair of orthogonal cathode readout planes with 25 µm SS wires placed at 1.5 mm spacing. The position information is obtained using charge division method and recorded using a laboratory built data acquisition system. The resolution and gas gain was measured for 5.9 keV X-rays (⁵⁵Fe-source) as a function of the anode wire voltage and gas pressure. It was observed that the proportional region of the PSD at 100 kPa pressure extended up to a high voltage value of around 1.5 kV and it shifted to high values up to 2 kV for gas pressure of 300 kPa. The energy resolution improved from 18% (FWHM) to 12% with increase in pressure. The spatial resolution of the PSD also showed improvement, with a value of 1.2 mm × 1.4 mm at 300 kPa gas pressure. A maximum gain of 5 × 10⁴ is obtained.