6890A "Shutdown-4" message?

Discussions about GC and other "gas phase" separation techniques.

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I am not a GC user. I am a reseller of lab equipment but only rarely of chromatography devices.

I inspected a HP 6890A today that I want to buy to resell and will do so if I can deem it still working properly or minimum cost to fix, but not if it will be expensive to fix. Trying to see if power up procedure indicates if working properly.

The seller stated it was working when decommissioned ~5years ago. He said it probably gave error because there is no injector on it (which there is not). He is the asset manager at a government agency so there is no "profit" potential in his comments but you never know.

Powering up:
I turned on and it did some selftest and/or startup procedures. I don't remember timing but a minute or something later the startup cycle stopped with a "Shutdown 4" message. I forget the latter wording but whatever that message says, something to the extent of "not adequate inlet pressure". It made a periodic single beep I think. Wondering if this means it's broken or just not properly setup to run correctly. Is it as simply as being because the item has been sitting for years without an injector and not adequately "sealed" so it needs to be "sealed" back up to get it to hold pressure once again? I assume it could maybe also be a leak? I hope not that as that is expensive to fix?

If you have knowledge of these from turning on without extended use or if injector missing and know how the 6890 typically reacts please let me know. Also your opinion if no big deal as a common message on properly working GC's to have this scenario. Or is it likely to be a costly warning?

Thanks
Brian
Without gases connected, I would EXPECT such shutdown and message. Can you make all setpoints "0" and try?
Especially if the message says Hydrogen Shutdown it is because the inlet can not build up pressure and the system will shutdown to prevent explosive gasses building up in the oven, it is normal message if no carrier gas is present.

If it is because it does not sense carrier gas flow, it should begin with a series of high pitched beeps, about 30 seconds apart, and till finally give a longer low pitch tone as the shutdown message appears. If that is what is happening, it sounds like the flow control module is still present but the injection port is missing. The controller expects to sense a build up of pressure to a certain setpoint, but when it is not reached, (because there is no injection port for the pressure to build in, or simply if no column is installed) it will shutdown the instrument to prevent damage to heated components that might be exposed to air.

If you use the Col1 and Col2 buttons to bring up column flow and set those to zero or Off it will eliminate the missing carrier flow as the problem. Also use the Front Det and Rear DET buttons to set all gas flows to Off in case it is sensing missing detector gasses. If you still get a shutdown message with all gas flows off, then it would be another part of the instrument causing the error. One other error is it could be looking for the heating element on the missing injector, you can use the Front and Back Inlet buttons to set the temperatures to Off and that might bypass the test looking for the missing injector.
The past is there to guide us into the future, not to dwell in.
Ok, great. Well I can no longer go to the GC to try turning gas ports off, or oven or any other suggested procedures. Since this was an item that he said worked 5 years ago when decommissioned and your general discussion had all kinds of examples of emergency equipment saving options, then I am fairly confident believing it is/was a normal operating scenario. They just didn't have it prep'd in a "show a potential buyer" format.


So this has helped me a lot as before I had no idea if it is a problem child and now I think I can buy it in working condition because probably just not shutdown correctly, started up in correct condition and injectors removed to confuse it and nothing more than that. I hope so anyways because I plan to bid assuming it's working. (only slightly nervous now :roll: )
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