The 6 MV Tandetron accelerator was built by High Voltage Engineering Europe B. V., Amersfoort, Netherlands. The machine was fully built and tested in Amersfoort before being transported to Cologne.

The accelerator mass spectrometer is built in such a way that both the cosmogenic nuclides⁽¹⁰Be, ¹⁴C, ²⁶Al, ³⁶Cl, ⁴¹Ca and ¹²⁹I) and the heavy nuclides ²³⁹Pu and ²⁴⁴Pu can be measured.

The accelerator system has two identical ion sources (SO110), each of which can be loaded with 200 samples. While one is used for measurements of solid samples, the second source is connected to a gas handling system and focuses on the measurement of CO₂ samples. After the ions are accelerated from the source, they pass through a 54° electrostatic analyzer (ESA) and a 90° magnet for low-energy mass separation. The molecules are then destroyed by the so-called stripping process (either gas or foil stripper) in the accelerator. This 6 MV TANDETRON accelerator is the central element of the mass spectrometer, followed by a 90° switching magnet as a filter element, which is also designed for heavy ions such as ²³⁹Pu and ²⁴⁴Pu. The stable isotopes are measured in the following offset Faraday cups. After passing through further electrical filter elements, the rare or unstable isotopes are identified and counted in the detector system, e.g. gas ionization detector.

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