This may not be exactly on-topic but a year ago we collected some powder
data with Hi-Star at ESRF Grenoble and had a hard time gluing pieces of
the pattern together. No matter how hard we tried the mismatch of the peak
positions between adjacent pieces of the pattern always remained. Only
intensities were really reproducible. However we did not use software from
Bruker but the general-purpose "fit2d". The integrating software from
Bruker might be better, but we hardly had a chance to try it on the spot
- our beam time was too short.
Another point is that the parallel beam optics and area detectors don't
make a good match. For Hi-Star I would rather use a pinhole collimator.
However, I know little about D8 design and may be wrong here.
The resolution may be a problem. The detector I used to work with had 60
micron pixel size which gives 0.017 deg angular resolution with 200 mm
radius of the diffractometer. Not really impresive. Another point is
diffraction geometry - beam size, focusing conditions etc may add to the
peak broadening.
In any case you should request detailed information from Bruker. They are
real experts, and helped me several times in the past.
Stan
