The X-Ray Diffraction laboratory is a user-operated service center laboratory available to any qualified UNM faculty, staff, graduate or upper division undergraduate students for sponsored research projects. The lab has existed since the early 1970s and has been in continuous operation as a multi-user service center facility for almost fifteen years. Our "workhorse" instrument since 1985 has been a Scintag PADV powder diffractometer. In 2012 we added two new instruments with the help of an NSF MRI award -- an advanced general purpose Rigaku SmartLab instrument for powder and thin-film work and a Rigaku D/maX Rapid II instrument for microdiffraction studies.