The MAX III storage ring

One of the primary goals of the 700 MeV MAX III synchrotron radiation source is to test and gain experience with new magnet and accelerator technology. Each magnet cell is machined out of two solid iron blocks that are then sandwiched together after coil and quadrupole installation. The MAX III ring makes extensive use of combined function magnets to obtain a compact lattice. In order to obtain flexibility in machine tuning pole face current strips are used in the main dipoles, which also contain the horizontally defocusing gradients. Commissioning finished in 2007 and MAX III is now going into user operation.Over the last year, MAX III has been characterized in order to both obtain calibrated models for operation purposes as well as evaluating the magnet technology. The characterization results will be described in this paper.