Improving the performance of an X-ray diffractometer

X-ray diffractometers are widely used by crystallographers in the study of the atomic structure of crystals. Such studies involve the sequential collection of many thousands of observations and can take many days of continuous experimental time. In this paper the authors consider methods for reducing overall experimental time by reordering the observational sequence using adaptations of Travelling Salesman algorithms. Substantial reductions in crystal orientation time of up to 40% can be achieved.