Superbend project at the Advanced Light Source

To satisfy the demand for more high energy, high brightness X-ray sources at the Advanced Light Source (ALS), a plan is in place to replace three 1.3 Tesla normal conducting bending magnets with three 5 Tesla superconducting magnets (Superbends) in the year 2001. This will result in 12 new X-ray beam lines (four from each superbend) for users. The Superbend sources will be an order of magnitude higher in X-ray brightness and flux at 12 keV than the conventional 1.3 Tesla bending magnets. The Superbend project is a major upgrade to the ALS where the 3 superconducting magnets will be an integral part of the machine lattice. In this paper we discuss the current status of the Superbend projects well as precomissioning studies prior to the 2001 installation for users.