The sequential beam injection system consists of an ion source, an electrostatic spherical analyzer, a bending magnet with an insulated chamber, three off axis Faraday cups and an X/Y steerer.

The post acceleration portion of the system consists of a bending magnet, three off axis Faraday cups, an electrostatic cylindrical analyzer and a gas ionization chamber. The figure titled "AMS system components" is a simplified line drawing of the accelerator layout.

Two of the cups at each end of the machine are used for carbon AMS measurements. The two cups plus a third set of cups can also be used for other species of AMS.

The ion source may be either a multicathode solid SNICS source or a multicathode gas SNICS source. In both cases a negative ion beam is accelerated from the source and passed through an electrostatic spherical analyzer (ESA). The ESA removes energy tails in the beam, which are produced by the cesium sputtering process. In systems containing two ion sources the ESA is made rotatable to select which ion source is to be used.

The beam then passes through a bending magnet with an insulated chamber. The bending magnet is set to bend 14C to the correct angle for injection into the accelerator. 12C and 13C are bent past the angle needed for accelerator injection into a set of offset Faraday cups which are monitored by AccelNET AMS. A power supply connected to the insulated magnet chamber is controlled by a signal supplied by the sequential injection control electronics. Voltages are sequentially applied to the magnet chamber to inject 12C and 13C.

A set of X/Y steerers follows the bending magnet. The steerers are also controlled by the jumping system. A different set of voltages is applied for each injected species to correct for slight possible differences in beam position and direction which may be produced by the different gap voltages applied to the magnet chamber.

The beam jumping control electronics may also be used for a simultaneous injection system. In this case bending magnet chamber bias and the steerers are not required but an electronic chopper is used to reduce the average intensity of the 12C ion beam to about 1% of its DC value. The data collection process is otherwise unchanged.