A Superconducting ECR ion source with Advanced design in Lanzhou (SECRAL) was successfully built to produce intense beams of highly charged ions for Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL).The ion source has been optimized to be operated at 28GHz for its maximum performance.The superconducting magnet confinement configuration of the ion source consists of three axial solenoid coils and six sextupole coils with a cold iron structure as field booster and clamping.For 28GHz operation,the magnet assembly can produce peak mirror fields on axis 3.6T at injection,2.2T at extraction and a radial sextupole field of 2.0T at plasma chamber wall.A unique feature of SECRAL is that the three axial solenoid coils are located inside of the sextupole bore in order to reduce the interaction forces between the sextupole coils and the solenoid coils. During the ongoing commissioning phase at 18GHz with a stainless steel chamber,tests with various gases and some metals have been conducted with microwave power less than 3.2kW and it turned out the performance is very promising.Some record ion beam intensities have been produced,for instance,810eμA of O7+,505eμA of Xe20+,306eμA of Xe27+,21eμA of Xe34+,2.4eμA of Xe38+ and so on.To reach better results for highly charged ion beams,further modifications such as an aluminium chamber with better cooling,higher microwave power and a movable extraction system will be done,and also emittance measurements are being prepared.