Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The first of the so-called diffraction-limited storage rings (DLSRs), MAX I V, has now gone into operation. For this ring, a multibend achromat (MBA) lattice is employed in order to achieve a small electron beam emittance. Several non-conventional technical system solutions have been introduced in order to reduce size, cost, assembly time, installation effort and to increase the ring robustness. Examples of this are solid magnet blocks housing several magnet items, a fully NEG-coated vacuum system and a low frequency RF system. The commissioning started in late August 2015. Several base-line parameters have now been reached like a sufficiently high stored circulating current, beam lifetime and beam quality for beamline commissioning. The MBA concept and the operation of the non-conventional solutions technical systems are verified. This article describes some of the technical solutions chosen and the early commissioning results.