Baseline rose, Wax Column kaput, Filament gone

[Giorgi]

hello to everybody,
we just managed to blow a filament on a Saturn 2000MS and here are all the questions arising.
The column had higher than normal bleeding for some time now. Could excessive bleeding be the reason for a filament to go?
1. When a filament is blown in the ion trap do we need to clean the whole trap or just change the filament? the MS noise now is at 10K counts while a similar systems noise is down to 4K. Air and water seem fine.
2. What kind of m/z due to bleeding one should expect from a wax column (ZB-wax)?
3. I am getting a strong 149 ion which i suppose it must come from the septa. They were recently changed. other ions include 277 and 177 87and 89 and fairly insignificant amounts of 73.

Kind Regards

[wsayers]

Yes, excess column bleed can shorten filament life. It is also likely to coat the inside of the detector (any type) with siloxanes and other beasties from the staionary phase as it breaks down. I would clean the whole thing.